Two-time presidential loser and former first lady Hillary Clinton dropped jaws during an interview with CNN on Thursday over what she said about former President Donald Trump’s “MAGA” supporters.
In a video clip posted online, Clinton was talking about how many Republicans sided with Democrats on a short-term continuing resolution last week to keep the government funded for another 45 days.
“You saw the number of Republicans who voted along with Democrats to keep the government open, so there’s clearly a common sense, sane part of the Republican caucus in the House. But I think they are intimidated,” she began in the clip.
“They oftentimes, you know, say and do things which they know better than to say or do, and it will require us defeating those most extreme measures and the people who promote them in order to try to get to some common ground where people can again work together,” she added, noting that in the past, there were “bitter battles” over issues but no “extremism.”
“That’s the way it used to be. I mean, we had very strong partisans in both parties in the past, and we had very bitter battles over all kinds of things: gun control, and climate change, and the economy, and taxes. But there wasn’t this little tail of extremism wagging the dog of the Republican Party as it is today,” she said, bringing up the man who vanquished her 2016 presidential fantasy.
“And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure. He’s only in it for himself,” she said.
“He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions, and when do they break with him? You know, because at some point, you know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen,” she added.
Instead of pushing back on such an outrageous suggestion — critics online likened Clinton’s remark to so-called “reeducation camps” used by authoritarian regimes around the world against political enemies — CNN’s Christiane Amanpour simply asked the former New York senator to describe what ‘deprogramming’ might look like.
“At this point, I think, sadly, he will still be the nominee and we have to defeat him and we have to defeat those who are the election deniers, as we did in 2020 and 2022, and we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican Party,” Clinton responded.
And no, Amanpour didn’t remind Clinton that she and most other Democrats decried Trump as “illegitimate” after he beat her and accused him of “stealing” the election.
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