Former Secretary of State and failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called for the "formal deprogramming" of supporters of former President Donald Trump, referring to them as "cult members."
Clinton made the provocative remarks during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, which was released on Thursday.
"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," Clinton began. "But I think they are intimidated. 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."
The former First Lady continued, "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, 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."
Clinton, unable to control the bitterness seeping from her statements, asserted that Trump is "only in it for himself," noting that he is now defending himself in civil and criminal cases. Hillary Clinton on Trump supporters: “At some point maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members.”
— ALX 🎃 (@alx) October 6, 2023
The interview took a sudden dark turn when Clinton suggested that his supporters may need a "formal deprogramming."
"When do they break with him?" Clinton asked. "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."
The CNN host asked, “And how do you do that?”
“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 said.
