Hillary Clinton labeled Donald Trump the “donkey of the decade” in an interview Monday with “The Breakfast Club,” a popular hip-hop radio show in New York.
Clinton, playing to the radio show’s feature “Donkey of the Day” — a distinction the former New York senator has won a number of times — said that she feels Trump deserves the label for an entire decade.
“He does scare me because what he is saying that he would do is wrong for our country. It is not only offensive to people and makes you cringe, but it is dangerous,” Clinton said. “He is setting people against each other, he is inciting violence.”
Clinton then took on Republicans for not taking Trump seriously at first, a decision, she said, that helped him rise from side-show candidate to odds-on favorite for the nomination.
“I have been taking him on from the beginning,” Clinton said. “The Republicans, they just sort of watched this train wreck happen and then wonder, ‘Hey, how did this guy get to where he is?’ ”
“Starting last summer I was, like, taking him on and now, I am taking him on even more forcefully,” she said. “I am running ads against him. People say, ‘Well, hey, wait, you don’t have the nomination. Why are you doing that to Trump?’ I said, ‘Well look, we can’t let that stand.’ “
Clinton called Trump “a cancer.”
“You don’t let the cancer grow bigger and bigger and bigger and then all of a sudden we wake up and we say, ‘What the heck has happened to our country?’ Everybody needs to be going after him,” the former secretary of state said.
Clinton’s interview with the hip-hop radio show — where she was asked about strip clubs, dance moves and Beyonce — is a far different format for her. “The Breakfast Club” is hosted by Angela Yee, DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God and airs on Power 105.1 FM in New York.
When Yee asked Clinton for something she carries with her at all times, Clinton said, “Hot sauce.”
“You getting in formation right now?” Charlamagne asked, a reference to Beyonce’s song “Formation.” “Really?”
“Now, listen, I just want you to know people are gonna see this and say, ‘OK, she’s pandering to black people,’ ” he said of Clinton’s answer.
Clinton joked back: “OK! Is it working?”
Clinton may indeed have been pandering, but the former secretary of state has previously mentioned her love of hot sauce and hot peppers.
“I think it keeps my immune systems strong,” Clinton said on the radio show. “I really do. I think hot sauce is good for you.”
At one point, Clinton started coughing during the interview, to which a host joked that she sounded like she had used some “medicinal” — a reference to medical marijuana.
“Yeah, I need some,” Clinton joked.
To close the interview, all three hosts suggested that Clinton could win more votes if she hosted an event at a strip club, arguing that it would be the first political event in such a venue.
“I think I will let somebody else be the first,” she said.