Friday, March 29, 2024

GOP Candidates Fire Back at Clinton for “Terrorists” Comment

When Hillary Clinton compared Republican presidential candidates to “terrorists” for their pro-life views, five candidates were not going to take it lying down.

Mike Huckabee’s was the strongest. Huckabee turned the tables and said it’s actually Planned Parenthood that acts like terrorists, given the way they dismember and slaughter unborn babies:

TUCKER CARLSON: So what do you make of Hillary Clinton’s comments, especially in light of her continued support of Planned Parenthood?

MIKE HUCKABEE: It’s hard for me to even begin to understand what Hillary was thinking, although this was scripted. This was not an off-the-cuff remark that she just accidentally blurted out. All of us have done that. This was scripted. She looked at her script. She intended to say this. And this is what makes it so remarkable. Tucker, she’s talking about terrorists — well, I’ll tell you what terrorists do. Terrorists cut people’s heads off. And that’s what they do in the Planned Parenthood clinics. And if she wants to talk about protecting women, what about protecting the women who thought they were going in for a ‘procedure to remove a mass of tissue’, and in fact, a baby with a heartbeat, arms, legs, toes, and eyeballs was hacked to death and the parts sold without that woman understanding that she had been exploited. She had been used. And somebody had made money off of her grief. If that’s Hillary’s definition of taking care of women, then I certainly hope I’m the one that gets an opportunity to stand on the stage and debate her about a year from now.

CARLSON: This is such an emotional subject. What you said is just so upsetting. It’s almost hard to talk about, but I want to be as non-emotional and clinical as I can be and just talk the politics of this for one second. So Hillary Clinton’s position is that there ought to be no restrictions of any kind of abortion, up to the very end of the third term, for the purposes of sex-selection, whatever – she’s against any kind of restriction on abortion. Is that, judging by the polls, your understanding of what the polls of American public opinion are — is that a mainstream position? Literally a mainstream position, in the center of what Americans think?

HUCKABEE: It isn’t, but even if it was, it’s immoral. This is one of those issues where we ought to forget about the politics. Somebody ought to provide the kind of leadership to say, ‘I don’t care what the polls show.’ This is the mark of a barbarian society. This is not the actions of a civilized people. Civilized people don’t hack other people to death, and then sell the parts because there’s money to be made from it. And that’s why I find it offensive when people say, ‘Well, let’s see what the polls say.’ Let’s don’t worry about what the polls say. Let’s say what right and wrong would say.

CARLSON: Amen. I guess, my point is, she’s the extremist here. I mean, literally an extremist. She has views that only a tiny percentage of people could have. And by the way, who do you think – and I don’t want to impugn anybody’s character — but really, how could you look at those videos and say, ‘You know, I’m okay with that’

HUCKABEE: Well, she’s admitted she hasn’t looked at those videos, and I think it’s pretty evident that she couldn’t look at those videos and continue to stand up at the podium and make the kind of flippant remarks that she did toward Republicans and terrorism. Fact is, if she wants to talk about terrorism — and this is classic Clinton misdirection, let’s change the subject so we don’t talk about what Hillary ought to be talking about, and that’s releasing top secret information — but if she wants to talk about terrorists, explain the terrorists that killed four Americans the night of Benghazi on September 11th, 2012. Those were real terrorists, and they killed real Americans, and she needs to give us some better answers than she’s given so far.

Carly Fiorina said Hillary is the real extremist:

MARTHA MACCALLUM: Let’s take a look at this in two ways: First, literally what she said and the meaning of what she said, and then the potential politics that underlie this comment. She’s comparing the GOP — Republican candidates — to terrorists. What do you think?

CARLY FIORINIA: Well, it’s outrageous. I mean, it’s an outrageous statement. And she will be called on it. But it’s also typical. It’s typical of Hillary Clinton — frankly, it’s typical of Democrats. I mean, remember President Obama has compared anyone who opposed his Iranian deal — a terrible deal — to the hardliners in Iran chanting, ‘death to America.’ This is typical. And what it tells us is that Hillary Clinton has no qualms about continuing to try and wage the supposed ‘war on women’ card as she runs for president. We ought to expect this. Democrats are continually describing Republicans as extreme, when the truth is, it is Democrats who are extreme. They are extreme as she continues to defend Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood can no longer be defended, and yet Hillary Clinton is out there defending them. It’s unclear that she’s ever had the courage to watch these videotapes, to actually see what Planned Parenthood is doing. So, Hillary Clinton and her party are the extremists here on a whole series of issues. And her comparing any Republican to a terrorist is simply over the line.

MACCALLUM: You know, I remember the last cycle of the Democratic National Convention. I was there, and we remember looking at the lists of what issues really mattered to people at the time. It was a lot about the economy – that was really the primary focus, and yet, when we watched the Democratic National Convention, person after person got up and talked about the ‘war on women,’ and what a terrible situation women in this country were in. So this is what worked politically in the past for them. My question is, has the landscape changed? And you mentioned the Planned Parenthood videos — do you think that it’s different now; that that will not work in the current environment?

FIORINA: Well, I think the landscape has changed to a certain extent, and of course it didn’t work in 2014. A lot of us, me included but not limited to me, worked very hard in 2014 to push back against the ‘war on women’. We saw people like Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst doing it so effectively. It’s why we can’t have a nominee that steps into their traps. You know, it’s a trap to talk about Planned Parenthood as being ‘about women’s health.’ It’s not about women’s health at all. So the landscape has changed, but make no mistake: the Democrats are going to play this card over and over again, which is why we have to have a nominee who is unafraid to push back on every single one of these outrageous charges. They will level them.

MACCALLUM: It’s clear that she made the decision to come out fighting. She was tired of talking about the email thing. There’s no doubt that her advisers said, ‘Look, we’ve gotta move the ball forward here. We’ve gotta talk about something else.’

FIORINA: That’s exactly right. And so what I intend to keep on doing — and I have been doing it from the very beginning – is calling her out, and any other Democrat out, on the extreme positions that they hold. So, yes, she has lied about Benghazi, her email, and her servers. I was the first one to say it, I kept saying it, and now the majority of the American people agree with me. It is extreme to say that it’s not a life until it leaves the hospital. Almost four million women have fallen into poverty under this administration. The policies that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats will pursue are bad for women, and we need to keep making that point over and over again. And wasn’t it interesting, just a couple days ago, there was a little exposé about how women are paid in my campaign versus Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Guess what? Women have higher positions in my campaign, they are paid better in my campaign than Hillary Clinton’s. So not only is she extreme, but she’s hypocritical as well.

Marco Rubio gave Hillary’s comment the respect it deserves: None.

STEVE DOOCY: Senator, according to Hillary Clinton, you’re one of those extremist Republican terrorists!

MARCO RUBIO: Well, she’s desperate. She’s panicked. Her campaign is in bad shape. I think it was Tucker [Carlson] a few minutes ago who was talking about it; her views are the ones that are radical. Here’s what’s most offensive about it: They won’t call terrorists ‘terrorists’, going back all the way to Benghazi and even before that, but they call their political opponents terrorists. So you’re going to see a lot more of this in the weeks to come. They’re in a lot of trouble, it’s been well-documented. Maybe even criminal charges are around the corner. And she’s been exposed as being incompetent and of course deceitful on the handling of the emails and so forth.

Rick Santorum destroyed Hillary with this one-liner:

And Jeb Bush did the same:

This is what all the GOP candidates should be doing when they’re accused of conducting a ‘war on women’: fire right back and show who the real extremists are.

Thomas Valentine is a researcher for APIA and a junior at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

More From The Pulse