The 2016 election was almost two years ago. But while Donald Trump came out on top in the election, Hillary Clinton can still draw ire from conservative groups and pundits—as when she recently criticized those who voted for Trump as supporting a backward-looking ideology.
Speaking at 2018’s India Today Conclave in Mumbai over the past weekend, Clinton said that voters who turned out for President Trump were following a campaign that was “looking backwards,” while those who supported her were fueled by optimism for America’s future.
“If you look at the map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle, places where Trump won,” she said. “What that map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that won two thirds of America’s Gross Domestic product. I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards. You don’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are, whatever that problem is, I am going to solve it.”
Clinton added that America doesn’t deserve a Trump presidency, and highlighted the people and businesses in the country that were standing up for their ideals. “Where governments lag like our own, business leaders and activists have stepped up to take action,” she said.
Clinton also noted — as she has before — that the forces of Russian interference that led Trump to the Presidency are still at work around the globe, something that she said “represents a clear and present danger to democracy everywhere.”
But it was her comments about Trump voters that drew the ire of conservatives and ricocheted across social media. Fox & Friends slammed her for “trash[ing] America’s heartland,” and the research arm of the Republican National Committee wrote on Twitter, “Bitter Hillary Clinton trashes America’s Heartland, calls states that didn’t vote for her ‘backwards.'”
Hillary Clinton trashes America’s heartland, implying Trump’s supporters are “backwards” pic.twitter.com/E2yvsa8lRV
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 13, 2018
Bitter Hillary Clinton trashes America’s Heartland, calls states that didn’t vote for her “backwards” https://t.co/domiT7Puqe pic.twitter.com/zhMEGN29p5
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 12, 2018