Former Trump Admin Official Reflects on ‘Mortifying’ Helsinki Press Conference: ‘I Looked Around to See If There Was a Fire Alarm’

Fiona Hill, a Trump administration national security official who famously testified in Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, reflected on the former president’s Helsinki press conference and how “mortifying” it was to watch in real time.

Hill helped President Joe Biden prep for his Wednesday summit with Vladimir Putin, and she spoke Tuesday night with CNN’s Don Lemon previewing that significant meeting.

After she alluded to Helsinki, Lemon asked her to elaborate on it, given how earlier this year Hill told the BBC, “My initial thought was just ‘How can I end this?’ I literally did have in my mind the idea of faking some kind of medical emergency and throwing myself backwards with a loud blood curdling scream into the media.”

Lemon read that quote and asked her, “Of all the disastrous things you have seen on the world stage, where did that moment fall? And did you seriously consider that? It was that bad?”

“I did seriously think about it,” she responded. “I first of all looked around to see if there was a fire alarm, but we were in a rather grand building attached to the presidential palace of the Finnish president, who had lent it to us for the occasion. And I couldn’t see anything that resembled a fire alarm.”

Hill even compared that infamous moment to another from Trump’s presidency:

I had exactly the same feeling that Deborah Birx had during the infamous press conference where there was this suggestion by President Trump about injecting bleach to counteract to the coronavirus. It was one of those moments where it was mortifying, frankly, and humiliating for the country, and it was also completely, I have to say, out of step of what had happened in the meeting prior to that.

You can watch above, via CNN.