Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned on Sunday that the US must remain vigilant of the threat posed by extremism “of any kind” as the US marks the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Ms Clinton was speaking on CNN, where she was interviewed by Dana Bash on State of the Union. Her remarks echoed the grave warning that President Joe Biden delivered in a national address last week from Philadelphia about the threat Donald Trump and his continued efforts to deny the 2020 election results pose to US democracy.
“We have ... been reminded about how important it is to try to deal with extremism of any kind, especially when it uses violence to achieve political and ideological goals,” Ms Clinton said in her interview.
She did not directly refer to Mr Trump in the interview, but has made clear her opposition to his continued efforts to undermine trust in US elections. In a conversation with NBC’s Willie Geist last year, the former presidential candidate said that a bid by Mr Trump for the White House in 2024 could be the final nail in coffin of US democracy.
"If he's not held accountable and he gets to do it again, I think that could be the end of our democracy,” she said at the time.
Mr Biden was heavily criticised by Republicans for his speech in Philadelphia, including Maryland governor Larry Hogan and former vice president Mike Pence who opposed Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Many on the right pilloried the president’s description of the threat posed by “Maga Republicans” as divisive and authoritarian; few, of course, have lobbed those same criticism at the former president who continues to publicly demand from his Mar-a-Lago resort that he be resinstated in the White House.
“They refuse to accept the will of the people,” Mr Biden said of such Republicans during his address. “They threaten our very democracy.”
Ms Clinton’s loss to Mr Trump in 2016 came as a shock to many on the left as well as those in the media who relied on conventional national polling and ignored signs of growing pro-Trump (or anti-Clinton) sentiment in areas like Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan, which swung the tide of the election in his favour.
But Mr Biden repeated that same performance to Mr Trump’s detriment four years later, winning traditionally red states like Arizona and Georgia, leading to the baseless cries of foul play from the now ex-president.
