Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton describes supporters of her once-rival and now-ally, Senator Bernie Sanders, as "children of the Great Recession," who are "living in their parents’ basement," according to a leaked audio.
Released by the Free Beacon on Saturday, the audio clip is related to a private fundraiser hosted by former US ambassador Beatrice Welters in Virginia in February.
“They’re children of the Great Recession,” said the former secretary of state in regard to the Vermont senator’s fans. “And they are living in their parents’ basement. They feel they got their education, and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves.”
The former secretary of state enjoyed her Democratic rival’s endorsement as she was nominated by the Democratic Party.
The majority of Sanders’ supporters appeared to disagree with the endorsement with delegates voicing opposition even during the Democratic convention.
In the hacked audio, Clinton is heard undermining his supporters’ understanding of free college, one of the main topics promoted by the Sanders campaign.
"There is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates," she said. "And on the other side, there’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel."
The former first lady also seemed to be questioning the Sanders campaign’s claims of having initiated a “political revolution.”
"If you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing," she said. "I think we all should be really understanding of that."
According to the Free Beacon, an American conservative political journalism website, the audio clip was "revealed by hackers who breached the email account of a campaign staffer."