“I WANTED TO MILK THE SOFT POWER DIVIDEND OF THIS MOMENT:” OMG: Samantha Power’s tale of triggering as Hillary lost is nothing short of schadenfreude gold.

No really, Power actually says that:

Power: Well, I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life, but none as immortalized as this one. I decided on election night to invite the 37 women ambassadors to the U.N., many of whom face struggles in their own foreign service, or at the U.N. of a kind that, as an American, I never did. And I thought what an amazing night for them. I mean, that’s what America represents to the world, when a glass ceiling is shattered in our country, it creates a whole new sense of possibility for people everywhere.

And so, I invited them. Most of them came, and we gathered with Madeleine Albright, our first woman secretary of state; Gloria Steinem, who is not only an icon here, of course, but all around the world, and we went through the same process, if you want to call it that, that so many people did at their election parties. As the host, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be quite the blowout that it was anticipated to be, because I wanted to make sure that people had a chance to interact with Gloria Steinem, and one of—

[Susan Glasser of the Politico]: So, your concern was that actually that the evening was going to be over early.

Power: Too soon. I wanted to milk the soft power dividend of this moment, and instead, and HBO was there, I guess unfortunately or fortunately, to capture it all, but instead, you really see what so many people went through, which was all of that sense of promise and excitement, and frankly, a dose of complacency. And then, it slowly dawning on us that not only was this going to be much closer than anybody anticipated, but that it was not going to end well.

To be fair, Power has had far worse ideas than inviting Time-Warner-CNN-HBO to help milk her soft power dividend, whatever that cringe-worthy phrase means.