Trump had seized on Clinton’s remarks as smearing a large number of Americans and suggested that they could cost her support in what looks set to be close-run race for the White House. The Republican accused her of a “grotesque attack on American voters”.
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“No one with a record of failure at home and overseas, no one with her avalanche of dishonesty and corruption and no one with that low opinion of the American people should every people elected president of the United States of America”, Mr. Pence said. She issued a statement today expressing “regret” for the being “grossly generalistic”.
Clinton, in making her “basket of deplorables” comment, seemed to acknowledge that she was about to oversimplify things.
“For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans”, he said in a statement released Saturday afternoon.
For those that had yet to catch Mrs. Clinton’s comments, the emcee of the summit, Gil Mertz, played a video snippet from the fundraiser on a big screen for the audience after Mr. Pence’s address.
On Staurday Hillary called half of Donald Trump’s supporters, “miserables” to which she expressed her regret. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it”.
Trump and his supporters quickly pounced on the remark, arguing that it revealed Clinton as disconnected from struggling Americans.
“Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of fantastic, hard working people”. Trump said at a campaign event in Sioux Center, Iowa, almost nine months ago.
Romney was recorded on video saying at a fundraiser that 47% of Americans would automatically vote for President Obama because they were dependent upon government and paid no taxes, and that his job was not to worry about them.
“He is taking hate groups mainstream”, Clinton said in August.
All that said, few people believe that the 47% remark is the only reason Romney lost the 2012 election. “And she wouldn’t be prosecuted”. At the NY restaurant, Clinton bemoaned the people she described as “deplorables”, saying “unfortunately there are people like that”.
She added, “And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up”.
“Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of unbelievable, hard-working people”. The tweet was in response to a speech Clinton gave that day in which she made a similar criticism about him, saying he “built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia” and “is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters”. “Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America”.
The other basket of Trump’s supporters constituted individuals desperate for change who felt let down by the government and the economy, Clinton added.
Nick Merrill, Clinton’s campaign spokesman, wrote on Twitter that she was referring to the alt-right supporters. A campaign spokesperson emphasized how many “alt-right” leaders support Trump for president and that their message comes through at his rallies.
But the moment recalled comments about voters – also at private fundraisers – that have tripped up presidential nominees in the past.
During the 2008 Democratic primary, then-Sen.
Clinton, who has said she is the candidate who can 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.
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We’ll see if she just pushed it too far.
