Supporters of Donald Trump may need to be “deprogrammed” as if they were cult members, Hillary Clinton said.
“Sadly, so many of those extremists … take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” the former first lady, senator, secretary of state and Democratic nominee for president told CNN.
“He’s only in it for himself. He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions. And when do they break with him? Because at some point maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen.”
In 2016, in one of the most seismic shocks in US history, Clinton lost the presidential election to Trump.
The billionaire spent four chaotic years in power before losing to Joe Biden in 2020. Refusing to accept that loss, Trump stoked the deadly January 6 attack on Congress. That brought his second impeachment, which, like the first, he survived. He now faces 91 criminal charges (17 related to election subversion) and assorted civil threats but is nonetheless the clear Republican frontrunner to face Biden again next year.
Clinton said: “I think, sadly, he will be the nominee and we have to defeat them. And we have to defeat those who are the election deniers, as we did and 2020 and [in the midterms of] 2022. And we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican party.”
Clinton was speaking after the fall of Kevin McCarthy, who became first US House speaker ever ejected by his own party thanks to pro-Trump extremists.
Clinton called Trump “an authoritarian populist who really has a grip on the emotional [and] psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population and the base of the Republican party, for whatever combination of reasons.”
Republicans, she said, “see in him someone who speaks for them and they are determined they will continue to vote for him, attend his rallies and wear his merchandise, because for whatever reason he and his very negative, nasty form of politics resonates with them.
“Maybe they don’t like migrants. Maybe they don’t like gay people or Black people or the woman who got the promotion at work they didn’t get. Whatever reason.”
Clinton said Trump’s “Make America great again” slogan, first in 2016, “was a bid for nostalgia, to return to a place where people could be in charge of their lives, feel empowered, say what they want and insult whoever came in their way.
“And that was really attractive to a significant portion of the Republican base.
“So it is like a cult and somebody has to break it, break that momentum. And that’s why I believe Joe Biden will defeat them and hopefully then that will be the end and the fever will break.”
