Alex Jones: Democrats are going to put us in camps

Hillary Clinton: MAGA ‘cult members’ need ‘deprogramming’
10/06/23 08:04 AM ET
Blog Briefing Room

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton railed against supporters of former President Trump during a new CNN interview, comparing those who still support the former president after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to members of a cult.

“Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” she said in a clip released late Thursday.

“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,” Clinton added. “He’s only in it for himself.”

She predicted Trump will likely be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, and she believes President Biden can beat him again.

“One will wreck our democracy. One violates the law on a regular basis. One appeals to the worst in our collective psyche. The other gets things done,” she said in the interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “Why is that a hard choice?”

A Trump-affiliated super PAC denounced Clinton’s comments early Friday, saying they are akin to her wanting “re-education camps.”

“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,” Make America Great Again Inc. spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. “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,”

Clinton also commented on the ongoing Republican leadership race in the House of Representatives, after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted from the job Tuesday by a small group of disgruntled GOP members voting with Democrats.

The GOP is in “an absolute hostage situation with its most extreme members,” Clinton said.

“[McCarthy] was not continuing to be captive to the far-right extremists. So they toppled him. It was a very small number as you look at the vote. But now we’re reaping the consequences of their misbehavior,” she added.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) are the front-runners for the job. Trump backed Jordan late Thursday after rumors circulated the former president could be interested in the role.

Clinton described Jordan, a co-founder of the conservative Freedom Caucus, as “one of the principal ringleaders of the circus” in the GOP.

And she urged the new Republican Speaker, whoever that may be, to rein in the party’s right wing.

“At some point, there needs to be a backlash against the control that this small group of extremists have,” she said on CNN. “And I don’t know who will lead that, but let’s hope whoever becomes the new Speaker will.”

Updated at 8:09 a.m.

Democrat Challenging Stefanik in Congressional Race Calls for ‘Reeducating’ Trump Supporters
Zach KesselJune 7, 2024 3:22 PM

Paula Collins, a Democrat running against Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) in the race for New York’s 21st congressional district, said during a recent Zoom town-hall event that her idea of a path forward from the Trump era in American politics involves “reeducating” Trump supporters.

“Even if we were to have a resounding blue wave come through, as many of us would like, putting it all back together again after we’ve gone through this MAGA nightmare and reeducating basically, which sounds like a rather — a reeducation camp,” Collins said.” I don’t think we really want call it that. I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.”

Collins’s comments conjure memories of a statement from Hillary Clinton in fall 2023 in which the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said that “MAGA extremists” needed to be trained not to support former president Donald Trump.

“Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching order from Donald Trump.”

Alex DeGrasse, a senior adviser to Stefanik, said in a statement that Collins’s attitude will lead to Republican electoral success this November.

“This radical New York City Democrat Socialist who literally is renting a bed and breakfast room in NY-21 was caught on tape saying she wants to force Trump voters through ‘re-education camps,'” DeGrasse said. “Everyone knows she will be defeated by Elise Stefanik by a historic margin. This is yet another reason why President Trump, Elise Stefanik, and voters in Upstate and across America will clean the Democrats’ clocks at the ballot box this November.”

DeGrasse referred to the fact that Collins has primarily lived in New York City and only began renting an apartment in the district earlier in 2024. While a member of Congress is not technically required by law to live in the district they represent in the House — needing only to reside in the state — Collins’s residence presents a potential point of attack for the Stefanik campaign.

National Review reached out to the Collins campaign for comment but did not receive a response. However, in an email statement sent to Fox News, Collins pivoted to a message about “civics education.”

“We currently have lawmakers, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, who mis-quote or mis-understand the law [sic],” she wrote to Fox News. “Even if MAGA were to be resoundingly defeated, we would need to engage in widespread civics education, which both red and blue voters acknowledge has been slipping in recent years.”

Collins pointed to reactions to Trump’s hush-money conviction as an example of what she believes to be a lack of knowledge.

“The goal would be such that regular citizens could understand the process by which the state courts process matters, compared to the federal court circuit, and so forth,” Collins wrote. She said Stefanik’s “outcry” over the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg — which legal experts, including those at National Review, have argued was predicated on politics rather than law — “bespeaks a lack of basic civics education, as well as a basic lack of respect for the state supreme court system in her home State of New York.”