June 11, 2024
By Emily Hallas
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is pushing back after a Democratic primary challenger said former President Donald Trump’s supporters may need to be sent to “reeducation camps” after the 2024 election.
Democrat Paula Collins, who is challenging Stefanik’s House seat in New York’s 21st Congressional District, made the comments during a public Zoom town hall this week.
“Even if we were to have a resounding blue wave come through, as many of us would like, putting it all back together again after we’ve gone through this MAGA nightmare and reeducating basically, which, that sounds like a rather, a reeducation camp,” Collins said, per Fox News. “I don’t think we really want to call it that,” she added, “I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.”
On Tuesday, Stefanik responded to Collins’s remarks in a post to X.
“Statements calling for President Trump supporters to be forced into ‘re-education’ camps must be unequivocally and immediately condemned, yet Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer continue to tolerate this unacceptable rhetoric,” she said.
Conservatives have slammed top Democrats for making similar remarks in recent years.
Last October, Hillary Clinton said, “Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the [Trump] cult members, but something needs to happen.” In 2021, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said, “There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be reprogrammed.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Collins for comment.
