Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “MAGA extremists” may need a “formal deprogramming” while slamming followers of former President Donald Trump.
Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, told Christiane Amanpour on a segment that aired on CNN’s CNN Primetime on Thursday that she believes there are “sane” members of the GOP but that they are “intimidated” by other members in the party. She cited the majority of House Republicans approving a 45-day stopgap last Saturday to avert a government shutdown.
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“You saw the number of Republicans who voted along with Democrats to keep the government open, so there’s clearly a commonsense, sane part of the Republican caucus in the House. 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,” Clinton said.
The former secretary of state also said that while partisanship has always existed, the “MAGA extremists” in the GOP are different and likened the group to a cult.
“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,” Clinton said. “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.”
“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? 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.
When asked how this “deprogramming” could be done, Clinton said the defeat of Trump and candidates aligned with him was the solution. Clinton, who had alleged her election loss in 2016 was illegitimate, also blasted “election deniers.”
Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC closely connected to Trump, slammed Clinton’s assertion and said that “tens of millions of Americans will reject the Democrat Party’s re-education camp agenda” next year.
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“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. 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,” MAGA Inc. spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The former president is the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary, leading the field of candidates nationally by more than 40 points, per the RealClearPolitics polling average.
