The Trump campaign has issued a statement responding to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling for the “formal deprogramming” of supporters of former president, referring to them as “cult members.”
Clinton made the provocative remarks during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, which was released on Thursday.
“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.”
Hillary Clinton on Trump supporters: “At some point maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members.”
— ALX 🎃 (@alx) October 6, 2023
The interview took a sudden dark turn when Clinton suggested that his supporters may need a “formal deprogramming.”
“When do they break with him?” Clinton asked. “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.”
The CNN host asked, “And how do you do that?”
“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, and we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican Party,” Clinton said.
Responding to Clinton’s comments, the Trump campaign fired off an email with the subject, “Statement On Hillary Clinton’s Re-Education Camp Proposal.”
“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,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for Make America Great Again Inc. “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.”
