On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday, Hillary Clinton offered a familiar refrain: Americans need to “stop demonizing each other.” Yet within the same breath, she pivoted to blame Republicans as the chief culprits of division, accusing them of rewriting history, silencing dissent, and rejecting uncomfortable truths.
“We have to stop demonizing each other,” Clinton said. “Now, I think most of that right now in our country’s history is coming from the right, from people who want to dominate, they want their point of view. You know, writing out slavery from history? That doesn’t make it go away.”
It was a striking juxtaposition—calling for civility while charging one side of the aisle with spreading lies, erasing history, and seeking control. Clinton framed her vision of constructive politics as rooted in “facts and evidence,” invoking policy debates on health care and artificial intelligence as the kinds of issues Americans ought to be tackling together.
Hillary Clinton says “we have to stop demonizing each other” and then immediately starts demonizing and attacking the right.
You can’t make this up.
pic.twitter.com/5M0oHgMLEm— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 24, 2025
But her remarks stand in tension with the broader Democratic message of recent years, one centered on portraying Donald Trump as an existential threat. In 2024, Democrats made “threat to democracy” their rallying cry, branding the president a “fascist” and even comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
Clinton herself has been among the loudest voices warning of Trump’s alleged authoritarian ambitions, at one point telling Rachel Maddow that he aspired to be a dictator—remarks made just a day after Trump survived a second assassination attempt.
The contradiction between urging an end to demonization while demonizing political opponents was not lost on critics. It comes at a moment when Democrats in Congress are facing scrutiny for refusing to honor slain Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Fifty-eight House Democrats voted against a resolution commemorating his life.
On the House floor, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dismissed Kirk as “ignorant” and “uneducated,” while Rep. Ilhan Omar used her September 11 remarks to attack Kirk’s legacy and question tributes to him.
Meanwhile, the broader backdrop tells its own story. According to The Atlantic, 2025 is on track to be the most violent year for far-left political extremism in three decades, with five terrorist attacks or attempted attacks already tied to left-wing actors as of July 4. By contrast, violence attributed to the political right has declined over the same period.
