Hillary Clinton says Trump followers need ‘deprogamming from his cult’

Hillary Clinton ripped into Donald Trump on Thursday, saying that his supporters need “deprogamming” from his “cult”.

In an interview with CNN, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee discussed the polarisation in the Republican party and the recent threat of a government shutdown.

She said that “clearly” there were some Republicans with common sense who voted with Democrats to keep the government open.

But those Republican congress members are “intimidated” by Mr Trump’s MAGA extremism, she said.

“Oftentimes … 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,” said Ms Clinton.

The former Clinton administration secretary of state recalled that there were “very strong partisans in both parties in the past” but said that “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,” she added.

“Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” she said.

Ms Clintion went on to admit that she thinks Mr Trump will “likely” be the Republican 2024 presidential nominee, but predicts a victory for President Joe Biden.

She described Mr Trump as the “classic tale of an authoritarian, populist who really has a grip on the emotional and psychological needs” of his base.

She said his “Make America Great Again” slogan was “a bid for nostalgia, to return to a place where people could be in charge of their lives”.

“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,” she added, describing Mr Trump’s base as “like a cult”.

“Somebody has to break that momentum,” she insisted.

Ms Clinton ended by predicting “the fever will break” within the Republican party when Mr Biden wins the 2024 race and the GOP will be able to return to working actual issues.

Ms Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Mr Trump and the two have exchanged many wars of words over the years.

Both during the campaign run and beyond, Mr Trump resorted to calling Ms Clinton by derogatory nicknames including “nasty woman” and “crooked Hillary”.

Back in 2017, he tweeted: “Crooked Hillary Clinton now blames everybody but herself, refuses to say she was a terrible candidate. Hits Facebook & even Dems & DNC.”

Ms Clinton then hit back at Mr Trump, mocking him for his bizarre use of the term “covfefe” in a 2017 tweet.

She said: “People in covfefe houses shouldn’t throw covfefe.”

This August, Ms Clinton gave an interview to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow where she discussed the criminal charges against Mr Trump, including his fourth indictment in Georgia.

“I don’t know that anybody should be satisfied,” she said when asked if she was happy to see him arrested.

“This is a terrible moment for our country, to have a former president accused of these terribly important crimes. The only satisfaction may be that the system is working. Justice is being pursued,” she added.