One of Donald Trump’s longest-standing and most reviled nemeses just tore chunks out of him on MSNBC over what critics describe as unprecedented attacks against the First Amendment by his administration.
“It is right out of the authoritarian playbook,” former first lady and 2016 Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton told Morning Joe Wednesday. “Silence your opponents, cripple the media that doesn’t give you the slavish attention and agreement you desire, use the power of the government to go after corporations and individuals.”
Her comments come hot on the heels of massive public backlash to ABC’s shock decision to suspend late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel last week.
The comic had accused “the MAGA gang” of “desperately trying to characterize” Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing far-right activist Charlie Kirk, as “anything other than one of them.”
Kimmel has since been reinstated, but his temporary cancellation is understood to have followed after Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chief of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to take action against ABC for supposedly allowing the comic to mislead viewers as to the suspected shooter’s motives.
“If I had only known I could call up the FCC chair and say, take this person off the air, get that person out of my sight, off with his head,” Clinton quipped Wednesday, in reference to “some of the lies that have been propagated” about her in the past.
These have included false claims among the MAGA base that the Clintons orchestrated the deaths of dozens of political opponents, that the former first lady was involved in running a satanic child trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizza restaurant, and that she was hiding a serious, possibly terminal disease from voters during the 2016 elections.
Clinton also praised Kimmel for using his monologue upon returning to the airwaves earlier this year to thank conservative voices, such as otherwise firebrand Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for having spoken out in support of him during his hiatus.
“I appreciated Jimmy Kimmel calling out some of the Republicans, frankly, who stood up and said, ‘Wait a minute, this… this is not right’,” Clinton said. “They want to silence people who are raising questions, who are asking really, what does this mean, how can you do this?”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for a response to Clinton’s comments.
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