Trump's supporters may need to be 'deprogrammed' like cult members, says Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential election to ex-US President Donald Trump in 2016, on Friday said that the Republican chief's supporters need to be 'deprogrammed' as if they were cult members. Speaking during an interview with the American broadcaster CNN, Clinton said that Trump's supporters are 'extremists' and that it was now more important than ever to defeat the former President of the US. 

'Trump supporters are extremists': Clinton 

“Sadly, so many of those [Trump supporters] are extremists, and take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” the former US First Lady, senator, secretary of state and Democratic nominee for president told the outlet. “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," she asked. 

Trump, who's a Republican frontrunner for the 2024 upcoming elections, faces 91 criminal charges, of those, 17 are related to election subversion and assorted civil threats. In 2020, Trump refused to accept the election result, slamming the ballots as fake, and hurling claims of stolen election. “I think, sadly, he will be the nominee and we have to defeat them. And we have to defeat those who are the election deniers, as we did and 2020 and [in the midterms of] 2022. And we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican party," Clinton said in the interview referring to Trump's recent civil fraud hearing in New York court. 

Clinton asserted that Trump “an authoritarian populist who really has a grip on the emotional [and] psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population and the base of the Republican party, for whatever combination of reasons.”

Last week, Clinton was invited to an event that commemorated her significant contributions to American diplomacy as the 67th secretary of state. In a speech there, the former Secretary of State launched scathing attacks on Trump and mocked his claims that the Russia-Ukraine war wouldn't have started if he was the president. Clinton called on America to "reinstate a foreign policy that plays to the best of American values, that puts our interests and security front and centre, but does it in a way that actually brings people to us, not pushes them away, would have been thought to be extremely difficult." She also mocked Russia's President Vladimir Putin for launching a war and warning the West against sending arms, saying, "Just an aside; too bad, Vladimir.  You brought it on yourself."