Former 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour today during an exclusive one-on-one interview: “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, in criminal actions, and when do they break with him? 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.”
When Clinton uttered the phrase “cult members,” Amanpour quietly laughs. Clinton, however, doesn’t laugh or smile in response — instead she suffers through what Amanpour sees as a chuckle-worthy moment and remains deadly serious and sober about the MAGA threat. Watch around the 2-minute mark, below.
Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, added: “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.”
Clinton also admits that she worries about a third-party candidate who could thwart Joe Biden‘s chances. Clinton said: “That’s what happened to me, as we all can recall…and that could happen again this time.”
[NOTE: Roll Call reported that “an astounding 7.8 million voters cast their presidential ballots for someone other than Trump or Hillary Clinton. The two biggest third-party vote-getters were Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (almost 4.5 million votes) and the Green Party’s Jill Stein (1.5 million voters).”]
Note: From 1998 to 2018, Amanpour was married to American James Rubin, former US Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department during the Bill Clinton administration — he was an informal adviser to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to former President Barack Obama.
