CNN Anchor Asks If Biden ‘Targeting the MAGA Crowd’ is Like Hillary’s ‘Deplorables’ Moment

CNN anchor Alex Marquardt wondered if President Joe Biden’s remarks torching “the MAGA Crowd” could have a similar impact to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s dubbing of former President Donald Trump’s supporters as “deplorable.”

During a brief Q&A Wednesday morning, Biden tore into Republicans as he responded to a question about the draft Supreme Court decision that would strike down Roe v. Wade, telling reporters that “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history.”

On Thursday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, co-anchor Brianna Keilar asked CNN host Michael Smerconish if Biden’s remarks could become a “pivotal moment.”

Smerconish replied that Biden is “trying to put Donald Trump on the ballot” in the midterms.

Marquardt then asked if the remarks could result in “fallout” similar to that which attended Clinton’s remarks in 2016, when she said “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.”

Marquardt asked “But Michael, in targeting the MAGA crowd, which we don’t often hear him talk about, if ever, do you think there’s any fallout from that? Is it kind of like when Hillary Clinton called this same Trump base ‘deplorables?'”

Smerconish agreed there’s a risk of backlash, and that Biden needs to walk “a fine line”:

Alex, be careful. Right? Because I think that that backfired on her. I think that she regretted it. I think it became a rallying cry. You remember there was merchandise, there was merch at the time. People were wearing T-shirts proudly proclaiming that they were part of the deplorables. So I think it’s a fine line, but I think we’re at a stage now, right, at this point in the spring where it’s the president and his team seeing what resonates and what’s going to drive people. And the argument that he seems to have settled on yesterday is one of, if Roe versus Wade is overturned: Where else might this so-called movement lead?

Watch above via CNN.

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