Hillary Clinton participated in a question-and-answer session hosted by her former speechwriter Lissa Muscatine. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo Clinton urges government workers not to quit their posts

Hillary Clinton on Monday urged federal employees who disagree with the Trump administration to stay in their jobs if they can, condemning what she called the “disregard, even contempt, among many in this administration about what federal workers know and what they’ve done, and the advice they can give.”

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, speaking at Warner Theatre in Washington in the first speaking event of the national tour for her new book, urged government workers to “stick it out, stick it out, because the tide has to turn.”


Scores of federal workers held over from the Obama administration have left the government since President Donald Trump took over, but Clinton pointed to the ongoing North Korea crisis as an example of why their expertise is needed in Washington.

“I don’t want us to lose the decades — really, if you added it all up, the thousands of years — of experience in the EPA, in the State Department, in the Labor Department, in a lot of the places being targeted by the administration,” Clinton said. “At some point they’re going to need you, and the country is going to need you. And I hope you’re still there.”

“If [Democrats] can take back one or both houses of Congress in 2018, you will have people you can talk to again,” she added toward the end of the hourlong event, in which she largely stuck to the themes of her book, “What Happened,” which rehashes the 2016 campaign and other portions of Clinton’s life.

The event was formatted as a question-and-answer session hosted by former Clinton speechwriter Lissa Muscatine, owner of the Politics and Prose Bookstore, which sponsored the event.

