Bill Clinton Warns Of ‘War’ On ‘Diversity’ In American Politics

Former President Bill Clinton warned on a podcast Monday that he believes there’s a “war” on “diversity” within American politics following President-elect Donald Trump’s win in November.

During Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, Clinton publicly supported her, joining the trail in key battleground states in October. On the “Leading” podcast, co-host Alastair Campbell asked the former president what had “gone wrong” in American politics to bring Trump back into office, saying that populism is “on the march.”

“Well, I think several things have gone wrong, and we’re sort of responsible for not winning when I think we should but it’s important for our friends in the UK and throughout Europe to remember that since I was elected and then re-elected we have only lost the popular vote in America twice,” Clinton said.

“Once when George Bush was given the narrowest re-election margin since Woodrow Wilson just before World War I. And once in this most recent election when we had to run with an enormous number of problems, and we lost by a million and a half or a million and six votes — less than Hillary beat Donald Trump by in 2016,” Clinton added. “So it’s not great, but it’s not the end of the world, but there is a war going on in America now essentially to try to dismantle the politics of inclusive tribalism.”

Clinton went on to say that he believes there is an attempt to push identity politics as a “zero-sum game.” He said that the issue lies in both “identity” and “economics.”

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“That is a politics that treats diversity as an asset, and no one can repeal it. But the idea is to make people around the edges feel that identity is a zero-sum game not a positive-sum game. I think a lot of it is the extreme income inequality that we’ve seen that in America beginning with a financial crash and 2008 things were getting very tough,” Clinton said.