Hillary Clinton: Trump’s GOP ‘can’t win a fair fight’

Hillary Clinton doesn’t mince words when it comes to Donald Trump’s Republican Party. 

So it’s no surprise that during an interview with Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias, the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee offered a simple, cutting explanation for the GOP’s attacks on free and fair elections. 

“[Trump] can’t win a fair fight and his Republican Party, which has become a cult answering only to him, can’t win a fair fight,” Clinton said. 

“It’s ridiculous that we would be looking at ways of limiting voters, but that’s the only way they can win,” she added. 

The facts are there to back her up. 

Trump’s Republican Party has spent the last year finding new and creative ways to disenfranchise voters, from cracking majority-minority districts to suing states for sensitive voter information to lying about noncitizen voting — a claim Clinton called “so vanishingly non-existent it is laughable.” 

The attack on voters isn’t just coming from the White House. It’s also coming from the conservative justices on the Supreme Court, who are taking off for the summer, having left the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in ruins. 

To Clinton, this is less of a surprise and more of a premonition coming true. 

As a senator, she voted against Chief Justice John Roberts’ nomination in light of a memo he wrote as a law clerk about how to weaken the VRA. Years later, it was Roberts’ court that put the final nail in Section 2’s coffin with the Louisiana v. Callais decision. 

“For a so-called conservative court, there’s nothing conservative about it,” Clinton said. “And there’s certainly nothing conservative about the lack of respect they have for congressional power, for Article I power, which looked at this problem, which studied this problem, which gathered evidence on this problem, and thought the Voting Rights Act was still necessary in order to conduct free and fair elections where everyone would feel that they were heard, their voice was counted, they were represented.” 

This is a “very long game that the movement conservatives play,” Clinton added, describing the right’s use of the Federalist Society, and its strategy of recruiting young Republican lawyers and putting them in positions of power so that when cases like Louisiana v. Callais come knocking, the Republican Party is ready to strike. 

How can Democrats fight against this Republican machine? To Clinton, it’s obvious: They need to play their own long game. 

“We don’t play [the long game] in a coherent, unified way,” she said. “I’m sure there are people in the center, center left, far left, whatever we call ourselves, who are working out what they want to see. But let’s get together. There are certain fundamental decisions that have to be made. Democracy is core to that.”

For Clinton, that means being ready with legislation on day one of the 119th Congress, in order to lay the groundwork for action when there’s a Democratic White House. 

“Let’s get what we can get passed. Let’s figure out what the coalitions are to build it,” the former secretary of state said. “I don’t think there’s anything more important than protecting voting rights. So let’s get to work on that right now.”