Hillary Clinton: Most Republicans Are 'Cowards, Spineless Enablers' Of Trump

Former 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told the New York Times Opinion podcast “Sway” that most Republicans want to see President Trump voted out of office, despite being “cowards, spineless enablers” of the president throughout his administration.

“[Trump] will maintain his hardcore support, but his influence will be so diminished, because most Republicans are going to want to close the page,” Clinton said in a New York Times Opinion podcast episode of the podcast that will be released Monday. “They have been cowards, spineless enablers of him. They want to see him gone as much as we do, but they can’t say it publicly. So I think he will have little to no influence. Now, will he be able to rile people up and all the rest of it, yeah, but he’ll also be facing all kinds of investigations, particularly at the New York state level.”

Clinton added that she “can’t entertain the idea” of Trump winning again in 2020, saying it would cause “cognitive dissonance of a grave degree.”

“Do you feel that if he wins, that will continue? Are you under any worries that that will manifest itself?” Kara Swisher asked Clinton.

“Look, I mean, I can’t entertain the idea of him winning, so let’s just preface it by that,” Clinton responded. “It would cause cognitive dissonance of a grave degree.”

“Why is that?” Swisher asked Clinton to elaborate.

“Well, because it makes me literally sick to my stomach to think that we’d have four more years of this abuse and destruction of our institutions, and damaging of our norms and our values, and lessening of our leadership, and the list goes on. But there’s no doubt that he would do everything he could to attack and punish anyone who was, in his view, an adversary,” Clinton said. “And he would be aided and abetted, sadly, by both elected and appointed officials. So of course, one of the most important accomplishments that I hope we see in this election is a Democratic Senate, where that would be the check that we would need against further abuse of power. I don’t think he has any boundaries at all, Kara. I don’t think he has any conscience.”

She added, “He’s obviously not a moral, truthful man. So he will do whatever he can to lift himself up. And remember, as I said, he lives with this specter of illegitimacy. He knows more about how he got really elected than we still do. Hopefully, we’ll learn more in the years ahead.”

Clinton goes on to call Trump a “disastrous president” that she believes has “caused a lot of harm.”

“I believe that he has been a disastrous president and has caused a lot of harm to what I care about in our country and around the world,” she said. “So I don’t really think about him much, other than to do what I can to defeat him, because that, I think, is an existential crisis that we face. He’s a very hollow man. He has very little of interest to me. So I’m not thinking about him other than to try to retire him as quickly as we can.”

Real Clear Politics average show Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading Trump by 8 points, but polls in a number of battleground states have tightened. In Florida, Biden is up by 1.5 points (Biden 48.7% to Trump 47.5%), while in Pennsylvania Biden is leading by 5.1 points (Biden 49.6% to Trump 44.5%). And in Arizona, Biden is up 2.4 points (Biden 48.8% to Trump 46.4%).