Former presidential candidate, former secretary of state, former U.S. senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton is a great fan of democracy, as long as people who disagree with her are banished from the public square.
In a recent CNN interview, she called for “formal deprogramming” of voters who support former President Donald Trump.
“Sadly,” she said, “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.”
She’s entitled to her opinion, but many people would disagree that “Make America Great Again” is extremist, and Trump’s accountants, attorneys and even family members might disagree that his decision to be “in it” is benefiting him personally.
“When do they break with him?” Clinton asked interviewer Christiane Amanpour, speaking of Trump’s supporters. “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.”
Approximately 75 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020 and he’s tied or leading in many polls in a head-to-head match-up with President Joe Biden. Clinton will need a very large venue for these deprogramming sessions.
In September 2016, candidate Clinton was recorded saying at a fundraiser that she categorized roughly half of Trump’s supporters as being in a “basket of deplorables.” As late as 2019 she said on CBS “Sunday Morning” that Trump was an “illegitimate president” whose campaign had used tactics such as “voter suppression” and “hacking” to win the election.
Clearly she is never going to get over losing to Trump. But Clinton’s comments on CNN also fit into a pattern of using interviews to try to shape news coverage of developments that are unfavorable to her.
In January 1998, Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Today” show to say that she believed her husband’s denials of a sexual relationship with a White House intern. “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president,” she said.
In her recent interview on CNN, Clinton told Amanpour, “We have to defeat them, and we have to defeat those who are the election deniers — as we did in 2020 and 2022. And we have to, you know, just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican Party.”
Why is a leading Democrat talking about how “we” are trying to empower “the right people” in the other party?
She made that comment as Republicans in the House battled over who would become the next speaker following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy. Eight Republicans and all Democrats voted to remove him.
As Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan was appearing to consolidate support in his bid to become speaker over the weekend, Alabama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers was reported to be working with Democrats to consolidate support for someone else. By Monday morning, however, Rogers had endorsed Jordan for speaker.
Dealmaking is a normal part of politics, but what’s not normal, or shouldn’t be, is a defeated presidential candidate defining voters’ support for her victorious opponent as some sort of psychological disorder. You either believe in democracy or you don’t.