FACT-CHECK: Hillary Clinton & ‘Super-predator’

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center in New York, Thursday, April 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
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Hillary Clinton was referring to gangs when she said in a 1996 speech:

They are often the kinds of kids who are called superpredators. No conscience. No empathy.”

(AURN) — In a new campaign ad, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has seized on a long debunked claim that Hillary Clinton referred to all black youth as “superpredators.”

Clinton’s comment came in a 1996 speech in which she was touting successes of her then husband, former President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime law.

Bill Clinton has since renounced parts of his law which is now largely seen as having led to mass incarceration; his wife Hillary Clinton, now a candidate for the White House is being dogged by a comment made in support of the law.

During a speech in 1996, then first lady Hillary Clinton propped up community policing and beefed police patrols, as spelled out in the law.

She went on to refer to those involved in gangs as “superpredators.”  Critics however, have mischaracterized the comment as having been a reference to all black youth.

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In an article dubbed, Ben Jealous Needs To Stop Lying About Hillary and Superpredators, Mediate.com writes, “If you look at the context of that quote, it becomes clear that Hillary wasn’t using the term as a broad slur against young black youths, but as a specific reference to those involved in gang murders, and she wasn’t using it to advocate for mass incarceration, she was promoting something called “community policing.”

On CNN in 2015, former President Bill Clinton renounced the law and the rise in incarceration it spawned. “The problem is the way it was written and implemented, we have too wide a net,” Clinton said on CNN’s “Amanpour.”

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