AP Photo Clinton: Threats to impeach me are 'ridiculous'

Hillary Clinton said Friday that threats to impeach her on the first day of her possible presidency are "ridiculous."

"It's just laughable!" Clinton told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in an interview conducted a day after her 11-hour testimony before the House Benghazi Committee. "It's so totally ridiculous."


Clinton was referring to comments by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who told radio host Matt Murphy last week that on her first day as president, she'd face impeachment.

"And in my judgment, with respect to Hillary Clinton, she will be a unique president if she is elected by the public next November, because the day she's sworn in is the day that she's subject to impeachment because she has committed high crimes and misdemeanors," Brooks said.

Clinton said statements like Brooks' are good politics for a certain part of the party's base.

"It perhaps is good politics with the — you know, the — the most intense, extreme part of their base. I guess that is, or otherwise why would they be doing it?" She said. "And I think we have to — you know, really try to build a — a larger base of our own that cuts across all kinds of geographic and and political gradations."

As for Vice President Joe Biden, who announced this week that he would not run for president, Clinton said he is now "liberated."

"I am a huge Joe Biden admirer, friend, a former colleague, and I know this was an excruciating decision in a time of just such pain and grief for him and his family. He is liberated and I don’t think history is done with him," Clinton said. "There is a lot for him and the president to keep doing in the next year and a half. And I want to build on the progress that they are leaving behind."

Pressured by Maddow to explain the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the Defense of Marriage Act from her husband's administration, Clinton cast them as "defensive action" against would could have possibly been constitutional amendments or harsher policies against LGBT population.

"It was a defensive action. The culture rapidly changed so that now what was totally anathema to political forces, they have ceded. They no longer are fighting, except on a local level and a rear-guard action. And with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, it's settled," Clinton said.

Asked how she felt after Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the head of the Benghazi Committee, suggested that Thursday's hearing didn't reveal much new information, Clinton said she was commited to testifying.

"I said I would do it and I did it because if there is anything new — which is unlikely after the eight prior investigations that have been held —we should know about it because the point is: What are we going to do to both honor the people that we lost and try to make sure this doesn't happen again?" Clinton said. "We do want to have a good conversation where people come to the table ready to actually learn about what we can do. I'm afraid that's, you know, not necessarily what this particular committee is doing, but we have learned a lot from our previous investigations, and I'm certainly, you know, committed to doing all I can to make sure we do save lives."

Clinton told Maddow that after the hearing, which ended at around 9 p.m. Thursday evening, she and her aides celebrated by retiring to her Whitehaven St. mansion.

"Well, I had my whole team come over to my house and we sat around eating Indian food and drinking wine and beer. That's what we did. It was great," she said.