Hillary Clinton on Saturday issued a statement saying that she regrets saying that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are in what she called a “basket of deplorables.”
“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 Clinton would not fully back down from the comments she made at a Friday night fundraiser.
“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. It’s deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people,” she said. “It’s deplorable that he’s attacked a federal judge for his ‘Mexican heritage,’ bullied a Gold Star family because of their Muslim faith, and promoted the lie that our first black president is not a true American.”
“So I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign,” she continued in the statement. “I also meant what I said last night about empathy, and the very real challenges we face as a country where so many people have been left out and left behind. As I said, many of Trump’s supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system are working for them.”
During a fundraiser Friday night, Clinton broke down Trump supporters into two groups, labeling half of his backers a “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. “And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up … he tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”
Her remarks prompted swift condemnation from Trump, and his campaign called on Clinton to apologize.
Goddammit, Hillary.
I’m so annoyed right now. Why did you have to apologize for speaking the truth? Do you think anyone from that basket will support you now?
Damn, Democrats. A spine, please!!!
Well, apparently she and her staff don’t read TPM or don’t care.
WTF? Even if it wasn’t an apology, it looks weak.
The basket comment was spot on, why back down?
Even if the basket comment was a tactical error, why double down and make yourself look spineless?
I just hope someone from the HRC campaign reads these TPM threads so they feel the depth of frustration from some very informed supporters…
Why did she have to apologize when trump insults different groups of people daily?