Even after Hillary Clinton issued a statement tempering her comment calling some of Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables,” Trump continued to lash out at the Democratic nominee on Saturday. And his Republican allies blasted Clinton throughout the day.
“Isn’t it disgraceful that Hillary Clinton makes the worst mistake of the political season and instead of owning up to this grotesque attack on American voters, she tries to turn it around with a pathetic rehash of the words and insults used in her failing campaign? For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans,” Trump said in a statement Saturday afternoon.
“How can she be President of our country when she has such contempt and disdain for so many great Americans? Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself, and this proves beyond a doubt that she is unfit and incapable to serve as President of the United States,” he added.
And throughout the day Saturday, Trump’s Republican allies jumped to his defense.
By referring to millions of Americans as “deplorables” & “irredeemable,” @HillaryClinton shows her contempt for ordinary people
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 10, 2016
The truly deplorable thing in this race is the shameful level of condescension & disrespect @HillaryClinton‘s showing to her fellow citizens
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 10, 2016
Hillary shows contempt for people in her “basket”. I think she blew a gasket. Her campaign headed for a casket.
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 10, 2016
Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of her comments.
— Paul Ryan (@PRyan) September 10, 2016
Clinton on Friday night broke Trump supporters down into two groups, one of which she called the “basket of deplorables.”
“To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it,” she said at a fundraiser.
After the Trump campaign called on Clinton to apologize, she softened her comments, but did not fully back down from the remarks.
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Clinton said in a Saturday afternoon statement.
“But let’s be clear, what’s really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values,” she added. “So I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign.”
And her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), said that Clinton did not need to apologize for her comments.
“She said, ‘Look, I’m generalizing here, but a lot of his support is coming from this odd place, that he’s given a platform to the alt-right and white nationalists,’” Kaine told the Washington Post. “But then she went on to say, ‘Look, there’s also a number of his supporters that have economic anxieties, and we’ve got to speak to those.’”
Predictable. Republicans see a chance to bring in the win here. For sure they will wring this like Dean’s scream for the next month.
The “half” apology or not doesn’t matter much.
At least Kaine said the right thing.
Aside: Clinton is practically talentless at politics. Qualified to be President, sure. Good at reading the moment and seizing opportunities—by herself, and not by the urging of her team? Doesn’t happen. I didn’t write this just because I am bitter now. That is what I have been telling my friends for months. To have a Presidential candidate with no talent, no charisma----wow. Is it European?
This is going to be great. Cue the tapes of the people at the Trump rallies using every vile racist epithet in the book.
It’s going to be an interesting two months.
Keep workin’ it, GOP. Because the exact figures don’t matter but the broad-brush picture is reality: a bunch of Trump supporters are just flailing around for something that gives them hope, and another bunch are pigs of various types but deplorable pigs in general. If you don’t like hearing it and the pigs don’t like hearing it then we can call the waaaaambulance and cart you off to the emergency room where you can get hugs and blankies and suck your thumbs until you feel better. Yeah, a few Trump supporters are more just going along because they’ve always been GOP folks and they’re just shrugging and getting with the program. And that’s deplorable too. Bottom line, Trump is not a normal candidate and pretending he is—well, as long as we’re in deploring mode, that’s deplorable too. We’re not in a time of respectful political discourse. Once you punks took him seriously, allowed him in the tent, that time was over.
I don’t see the problem here. Doesn’t tRump make jokes about Hilary’s supporters almost daily?
Would Reincey like to give us a list of the “Great Americans” that support Trump. I wonder which criteria Reincey is using for “Great Amercians?”