Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there needs to be a “formal deprogramming” of supporters of former President Donald Trump, calling them “cult members.”
“Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” the former Democratic presidential nominee said in a CNN interview posted Thursday.
She said the two parties need to find a way to work together again because that’s how it used to be, even though there were “very bitter battles” over policies such as gun control, climate change, the economy and taxes.
“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 said. “That’s the way it used to be.”
“But there wasn’t this little tail of extremism, waving, you know, wagging the dog of the Republican Party as it is today,” she said. “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.”
The Trump-affiliated super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. attacked the interview, saying that Americans will reject the “re-education camp agenda.”
“President Trump has said countless times that they are only coming after him, because he stands in their way from coming after you — and Hillary Clinton just confirmed that to be true,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. “Tens of millions of Americans will reject the Democrat Party’s re-education camp agenda in November 2024 when we make Donald Trump the 47th president of the United States.”
In her losing 2016 presidential campaign against Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton referred to some of his supporters as “deplorables.”
In her interview this week, Mrs. Clinton admitted that she thinks Mr. Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee, but that President Biden can beat him again.
“One will wreck our Democracy. One violates the law on a regular basis. One appeals to the worst in our collective psyche. The other gets things done,” she said “Why is that a hard choice?”
She also noted that the recent ousting of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy shows that the GOP is in “an absolute hostage situation with its most extreme members.”
“He was not continuing to be captive to the far-right extremists. So they toppled him,” she said of Mr. McCarthy. “It was a very small number as you look at the vote. But now we’re reaping the consequences of their misbehavior.”
Mr. McCarthy was removed with a 216-210 vote, with only eight House Republicans joining the Democrats to oust him.
There have been some Republicans who have thrown their hats in the ring to be the next speaker, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Jordan early Friday, even though there was some talk of backing the former president for the role.
Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Jordan was “one of the principal ringleaders of the circus” in the GOP.
“At some point, there needs to be a backlash against the control that this small group of extremists have,” she said. “And I don’t know who will lead that, but let’s hope whoever becomes the new speaker will.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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