Huckabee took an unconventional approach to his criticism, composing a short poem.
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Clinton – who’s said she’s the candidate to unify a divided country- made the comment at an LGBT fundraiser Friday night at a New York City restaurant, with about 1,000 people in attendance.
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.
At the fundraiser, Ms. Clinton bemoaned the people she described as “deplorables”, saying “unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up”.
Clinton, however, argued on Saturday that the word “deplorable” was reasonable to describe much of Trump’s campaign.
“While Hillary said awful things about my supporters, and while many of her supporters will never vote for me, I still respect them all!”
“Well, Tim, when Donald Trump and I said that the small and bullying president of Russian Federation was a strong leader on the world stage, that wasn’t an endorsement of Vladimir Putin, that was an indictment of the weak and feckless leadership of this president and your running mate”, the IN governor continued. “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”.
Clinton’s remark quickly became the top trending topic on Twitter, with the hashtag #BasketofDeplorables drawing angry comments from Trump supporters, but also sarcastic jabs at them, as well.
In a statement Saturday, a day after Clinton said she regards half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables”, Reince Priebus said Clinton is showing “her outright contempt for ordinary people”.
“Hillary Clinton’s low opinion of the people that support this campaign should be denounced in the strongest possible terms”, Mike Pence, the governor of in and Trump’s running mate, said at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.
“I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign”, she went on, but she offered an olive branch of sorts to downscale Trump voters. “She referred to those people as, uh, irredeemable”.
Of course, while Clinton is taking heat for her comment, Trump’s brand is controversy.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill noted a previous speech in which she accused Trump of embracing a brand of USA political conservatism associated with white nationalism and nativism known as the “alt right” movement.
Clinton has not let the media into many private fundraisers, but press was allowed in to hear her remarks Friday.
“That other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change”, Clinton continued. People who align themselves with the white nationalist “alt-right” movement “appear to make up half his crowd when you observe the tone of his events”, spokesman Nick Merrill tweeted.
Hillary Clinton speaks at a LBGT For Hillary Gala in NY on Friday.
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Donald Trump told mourners at a funeral service for conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly that she promoted the idea that the “little person” can beat “the rigged system”.
