Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton smeared nearly all Republican women as “handmaiden[s] to the patriarchy” in a video posted May 15.
When Clinton — in a discussion recorded May 1 at The 92nd Street Y, New York — fielded a question from interviewer Margaret Hoover on what advice she had “for the first female president of the United States,” she levied the attack on Republican women. The former secretary of state and failed 2016 presidential candidate notably said on Sept. 9, 2016 that 50% of President Donald Trump’s supporters belonged in what she referred to as “the basket of deplorables.”
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“Well, first of all, don’t be a handmaiden to the patriarchy, which kind of eliminates every woman on the other side of the aisle, except for very few,” Clinton said.
The former secretary of state named Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as one of the rare examples of a Republican woman who is not ” a handmaiden to the patriarchy.” Hoover also mentioned former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, which Clinton appeared to agree with, saying, “Yeah, there’s a few.”
Murkowski opposed Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to serve as Defense secretary, along with his pardons of Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol rioters. She also joined Senate Democrats and three additional Republican senators on April 3 to end Trump’s national emergency declaration underpinning his tariffs on Canada.
Cheney was one of two Republicans appointed to the Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. She lost her 2022 reelection bid to Trump-backed Harriet Hageman by over 37%, and endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in September.
“Look, first we have to get there, and it is, you know, obviously so much harder than it should be,” Clinton added. “So, you know, if a woman runs who I think would be a good president — as I thought Kamala Harris would be, and as I knew I would be — I will support that woman.”
Harris performed well with women and college-educated white voters in November, while Trump received significantly more support than her among men and white voters without college degrees, NBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki reported in December.
Clinton received backlash for her 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment, which she made at a fundraiser in New York. Trump defeated Clinton in the 2016 election just two months later, despite being an outsider businessman who had never served in public office, shocking the political and media establishment.
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” she said at the time. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
“He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric,” she added. “Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
The former secretary of state expressed remorse the following day.
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea,” Clinton said. “I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong.”
Moreover, former President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage” in October 2024, also receiving blowback. Trump responded shortly after by donning a bright safety vest and hosting a press conference from inside a garbage truck in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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