MSNBC reporter Garrett Haake on Wednesday called Hillary Clinton's failure to become president in spite of winning the popular vote an example of "the institutions having broken down" in the United States.
Haake spoke about the ongoing debate in Washington over civility in political discourse, following recent incidents where Trump administration officials have been jeered or even expelled from public places because of their politics. The most recent example was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao being heckled as they left a Georgetown event on Tuesday.
Responding to McConnell's remarks Wednesday hoping for a return to "civil discourse" in the U.S., Haake said there was a "generational element" to the acidic level of opposition to Trump.
"Speaking as a millennial, people I talk to, my friends, people who I correspond with on Twitter, a feeling of if the institutions have broken down," he said. "They saw the economy fall apart. They saw scandals in the church. They saw an election where the person who got the most votes didn't win, and I think there's a feeling like the traditional institutions here haven't worked, and people are looking for another outlet now."
Clinton has repeatedly made reference to her popular vote victory over President Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Clinton ran up huge tallies in California and New York—clearly blue states neither candidate campaigned in—but she narrowly lost the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, and Ohio, all states President Barack Obama won twice.