In her forthcoming book on the 2016 race, Hillary Clinton wrote that Donald Trump's close positioning at the second presidential debate "was incredibly uncomfortable.” | Saul Loeb/AP Clinton says her ‘skin crawled’ from Trump’s looming behavior at debate In excerpts from her new memoir, the former presidential candidate describes moments from her failed 2016 campaign.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said her “skin crawled” during last year’s second presidential debate, a reaction to Donald Trump standing ominously near her as she delivered answers before a national audience.

In an excerpt from her forthcoming book on the 2016 race, Clinton recalled Trump’s uncomfortably close positioning on stage during the town hall-style debate at Washington University in St. Louis. The event took place just days after an audio recording from a years-old “Access Hollywood” interview surfaced of the president bragging in vulgar terms about how his celebrity status allowed him to sexually assault women without consequence.


“This is not OK, I thought. It was the second presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces,” Clinton wrote in her book “What Happened,” an excerpt of which was broadcast Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“It was incredibly uncomfortable,” she wrote. “He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled. It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, well, what would you do? Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, ‘back up you creep, get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’”

At the time of the debate, Trump’s campaign was thought to be on the ropes, battered by the “Access Hollywood” tape as well as a wave of accusations of sexual assault from multiple women. Trump responded with a taped apology for his remarks on the recording and a denial of every assault accusation. As his guests at the second debate, Trump brought multiple women who had accused former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, of sexual assault, hosting a media event with them 90 minutes before he was to take the stage.

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, then Trump’s campaign manager, later confirmed that the president had planned to seat the women in his family’s box, where they would have been more visible to Hillary Clinton while she was on stage.

Trump loomed often over Hillary Clinton while she gave answers to the town hall debate attendees. In her book, the former secretary of state wrote that she opted not to make an issue of it, although she wondered in writing whether she should have.

“I chose option A. I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off. I did, however, grip the microphone extra hard,” she wrote. “I wonder, though, whether I should have chosen option B. It certainly would have been better TV. Maybe I have overlearned the lesson of staying calm, biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world.”

In another excerpt, Hillary Clinton wrote of the disappointment she still feels in having lost the election and of the emotional highs and lows of the presidential race. She said her race for the presidency was “exhilarating, joyful, humbling, infuriating and just plain baffling” and that her book should not be considered an exhaustive account of her 2016 run because “I have too little distance and too great a stake in it.”

“Every day that I was a candidate for president, I knew that millions of people were counting on me and I couldn't bear the idea of letting them down, but I did. I couldn't get the job done and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life,” Clinton wrote. “In this book, I write about moments from the campaign that I wish I could go back and do over. If the Russians could hack my subconscious, they’d find a long list.

“I also capture some moments I want to remember forever,” she continued. “Like when my tiny granddaughter raced into the room while I was practicing my convention speech and what it was like hours later to step on stage to deliver that speech as the first woman ever nominated by a major political party for president of the United States.”

The book is scheduled to be released Sept. 12.