Former First Lady and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said there needs to be a “formal deprogramming” of Trump supporters.
Clinton went on to tell CNN in a Thursday interview that Trump supporters are “cult members” and “something needs to happen” to deal with the “MAGA extremists.”
“We’ve 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,” said Clinton to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “But there wasn’t this little tail of extremism wagging the dog of the Republican party as it is today. 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? Because at some point, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, but something needs to happen.”
Clinton also stressed the importance of her words because Donald J. Trump will likely be the Republican party’s presidential nominee in 2024.
“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,” said Clinton. “And we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican party.”
“It’s a classic tale of an authoritarian, populist who really has a grip on the emotional psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population,” Clinton added. “And the base of the Republican party, for whatever combination of reasons — and it is emotional and psychological — sees in him someone who speaks for them. And they are determined that they will continue to vote for him, attend his rallies, wear his merchandise, because for whatever reason, he and his very negative, nasty form of politics resonates with them.”
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Clinton’s call to reeducate Trump supporters comes on the heels of Biden’s FBI admitting they are beginning to regard Trump supporters as terrorists.
The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.
The challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the primary federal agency charged with law enforcement, is to pursue and prevent what it calls domestic terrorism without direct reference to political parties or affiliations—even though the vast majority of its current “anti-government” investigations are of Trump supporters, according to classified data obtained by Newsweek.
“The FBI is in an almost impossible position,” says a current FBI official, who requested anonymity to discuss highly sensitive internal matters. The official said that the FBI is intent on stopping domestic terrorism and any repeat of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. But the Bureau must also preserve the Constitutional right of all Americans to campaign, speak freely and protest the government. By focusing on former president Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters, the official said, the Bureau runs the risk of provoking the very anti-government activists that the terrorism agencies hope to counter.
BOMBSHELL: Trump Supporters Officially Listed as Terrorists by Biden’s DHS