Two weeks after Hillary Clinton sparked an uproar by blaming backward-looking voters in middle America for her 2016 election loss, Republicans are already laying plans to turn her remarks into a major campaign talking point. Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley on Monday released two ads tying Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill to Clinton’s remarks.
The first, a 30-second spot, is clipped from MSNBC interview on Sunday, in which McCaskill was asked whether she thought Clinton’s remarks were helpful. Clinton had contrasted “all that red in the middle, where Trump won” with “the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
The ad intersperses McCaskill’s remarks with Clinton’s from March 13: “You didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs; you don’t want to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are—whatever your problem is, [Trump was] gonna solve it.”
“I understand the point she was trying to make, but it felt like she was criticizing Missouri voters,” McCaskill says in the ad. “I think it certainly is being taken out of context.”
Hawley spokeswoman Kelli Ford said McCaskill’s remarks showed that the senator was more interested in defending Clinton than in standing up for her constituents.
“McCaskill had a real opportunity to defend Missourians but chose to backtrack for her friend Hillary instead,” Ford said.
In the segments of her interview not included in the Hawley ad, McCaskill did go on to criticize Clinton’s language, which she said “wasn’t helpful”: “For those of us that are in states that Trump won, we would really appreciate if she would be more careful and show respect to every American voter and not just the ones who voted for her.”
The McCaskill campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
An accompanying 15-second Hawley ad quotes another line from McCaskill: “If you’ve played by the rules and worked hard all your life, and you’re further behind this year than you were 10 years ago, no wonder you want something completely different.”
