Clinton insults conservative women, says don't be 'handmaiden to patriarchy'

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Hillary Clinton didn’t have anything good to say about conservative women when she offered advice for the first female president of the United States.

The former secretary of state, who ran for president in 2016 and lost to then-political newcomer Donald Trump, told a New York City audience earlier this month that a potential female leader should not be subservient to men.

“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 during a discussion recorded May 1 at The 92nd Street Y, a Jewish cultural and community centre.

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The hourlong conversation with Margaret Hoover, political commentator, strategist, and great-granddaughter of 31st U.S. president Herbert Hoover, was shared online last week and first noticed by the Daily Caller.

Clinton said one example of a woman who is not a “handmaiden to the patriarchy” is Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, while Hoover mentioned former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.

Murkowski opposed Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defence as well as his presidential pardons of U.S. Capitol rioters. Cheney was one of two Republicans appointed to the committee that investigated the Capitol riot and backed former vice-president Kamala Harris during her run for the White House last year after then-president Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term following increasing calls to step aside.

“Look, first we have to get there, and it is, you know, obviously so much harder than it should be,” Clinton said. “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.”

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Clinton appears to have not learned from a previous comment she made during a September 2016 campaign fundraising event where she called half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables” and received backlash for the insult.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” she said at the New York event 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.”

Clinton added that those people are “irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” The next day, following criticisms from Trump and other conservatives, she showed contrition.

“Last night I was grossly generalistic, and that’s never a good idea,” Clinton said at the time. “I regret saying half — that was wrong.”