Hillary Clinton slams Donald Trump voters

The former secretary of state said US democracy ‘would end’ if Trump won again and suggested his supporters are mentally unwell.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Picture: AFP

Hillary Clinton has suggested Donald Trump supporters are mentally unwell, complicating any longshot comeback by the former secretary of state amid questions surrounding Joe Biden’s ability to lead the Democrat ticket for president in 2024.

In comments reminiscent of her controversial “basket of ­deplorables” description of Republican voters during her unsuccessful campaign for president in 2016, the former secretary of state questioned the rationality of Mr Trump’s supporters.

“Any sensible person who looks at that former president and says, ‘oh, let’s do this again’, needs an intervention because he’s only gotten worse,” she said at a Financial Times conference in Washington overnight on Saturday.

Mr Trump, facing a series of potential and actual criminal and civil investigations, remains the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, enjoying upwards of 50 per cent of support among Republicans according to most recent polls.

A national ABC/Washington Post poll published earlier this month put the former president’s support at 49 per cent, seven percentage points ahead of Joe Biden, 80, on the question of a ­hypothetical 2024 rematch, as the incumbent Democrat struggles to generate momentum.

Mrs Clinton, 74, who has said she wouldn’t put herself forward as a candidate again, dismissed concerns about Mr Biden’s age and declared US democracy would end if the former president won a second term.

“[A Trump victory] would be the end of democracy in the United States, and it would be the end of Ukraine in a week; he will pull us out of NATO if he wins again, just like he pulled us out of the Iran deal and out of the Paris ­accords,” she said.

The veteran Democrat powerbroker and wife of former president Bill Clinton also, confusingly, suggested Vladimir Putin – whom she described as a “complicated, Messianic, narcissistic, authoritarian” – would not have invaded Ukraine if Mr Trump had won ­re-election in 2020.

“[Putin] launched his invasion, his second invasion of Ukraine, in part because Trump lost, because he thought if Trump had won, Trump would have pulled us out of NATO, it would literally have been a cakewalk for him,” she said.

“And so when Trump didn’t win, [Putin] figured he had to go forward, he thought he had enough chips with the Germans and others to prevent a united front in support of Ukraine against his invasion. He turned out to have absolutely the wrong calculation.

Mrs Clinton, a strong supporter of a strong US military presence abroad, also said the strong US ­response to Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had been a powerful ­deterring lesson for China.

“I was of the opinion that he that Xi would make his move against Taiwan sometime within, you know, three to four years of really consolidating his power. I didn’t know whether it’d be a cyber attack or a blockade invasion,” she said.

“I think Ukraine has really set him back. I mean, what has happened in Ukraine has had a significant impact, in my view, on the Chinese leadership.”