FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - Former President Bill Clinton stopped in South Florida to promote a new espionage novel he co-wrote, but the conversation also shifted to pressing current affairs with local ties.
Tuesday night’s appearance, which took place at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, gave the 42nd U.S. commander in chief a chance to discuss “The President Is Missing,” the book he authored in partnership with James Patterson.
The book marks the first time a former president and an author have come together to write a fiction novel.
“Everything that you can imagine that’s electronic can be hacked, so that’s what we tried to [write about],” said Clinton.
The storyline centers on a U.S. president who goes missing after a cyberterrorist attack.
Patterson, who was also present at the sit-down talk, elaborated on his collaborative process with Clinton.
“What we did try to do was to make sure that authenticity came through over and over again,” said Patterson. “There’s a terrible, devastating attack on the United States in the book, and if it happened, it would happen something like this.”
The night largely focused on the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Clinton said he’s beyond impressed with how they took the Feb. 14 mass shooting and turned it into a movement that has spread across the country.
“What these Stoneman Douglas kids did, they did something that I, as president, could not do,” said Clinton. “When I was winning the fight, and we passed [legislation], they made it a voting issue.”
A majority of the book was written over the phone between Clinton and Patterson. It is currently available for sale.
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