Republican vice presidential candidate candidate Mike Pence on Saturday denounced Hillary Clinton’s Friday remark that some of Donald Trump’s supporters are part of a “basket of deplorables.”
Pence took a moment out of his speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., to address Clinton’s comments. He struggled to find Clinton’s exact remarks in the materials on the podium before saying that Clinton described Trump supporters in “the most deplorable of terms.”
“She referred to those people as irredeemable,” he said, before launching into a defense of Trump voters.
“I campaign all across this country for Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton’s low opinion of the people that support this campaign should be denounced in the strongest possible terms,” Pence told the audience. “The truth of the matter is that the men and women who support Donald Trump’s campaign are hard-working Americans. Farmers. Coal miners. Teachers. Veterans. Members of our law enforcement community. Members of every class of this country who know that we can make America great again.”
“So let me just say, from the bottom of my heart — Hillary, they are not a basket of anything. They are Americans and they deserve your respect,” he added.
During a Friday night fundraiser, Clinton broke down Trump’s supporters into two groups, one of which she labeled as 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.
Her comments set off the Trump campaign, which quickly called on Clinton to apologize for her remark.
