WASHINGTON, D.C.: Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said Saturday (Sunday in Manila) she regretted calling half of Donald Trump’s supporters “deplorable” – a remark the billionaire Republican candidate slammed as her “worst mistake of the political season”.
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On Saturday (10 September), Clinton released a statement and said, “Last night I was “grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea”. “I regret saying “half”-that was wrong”, she said”.
Clinton made her remarks about Trump’s supporters at a lavish event that featured performances from Barbra Streisand and Rufus Wainwright.
Of course, while Clinton is taking heat for her comment, Trump’s brand is controversy.
“For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans”, he added in a statement, calling Clinton “unfit” to be president.
“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”.
The rivals are neck and neck in the key battleground states of OH and Florida.
Addressing the issue of Trump’s popularity, Clinton said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right?”
“And he has lifted them up”, Clinton continued. But she still was generalizing a large segment of the American people.
“That other basket of people are people who feel that 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”. An investigation into the 17 years of tax filings of The Donald J. Trump Foundation and more than 200 interviews concluded that Trump rarely gave money to his own charity. Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence condemned the comments and said, “The men and women who support Donald Trump’s campaign are hardworking Americans. They are Americans and they deserve your respect”, he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “She’s not wrong. There is a portion of Trump supporters who identify as racists, white nationalists and more”. She also addressed the whisper campaign directly in an appearance last month on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show.
And the Washington Post tried to minimize the comment’s effect by saying that while Romney had alienated his “actual supporters”, including poor whites on welfare who might vote Republican, Clinton was just speaking a popular truth to power.
Sixty-one percent of Trump supporters say they are following the campaign very closely, and 93 percent say they will definitely vote. Clinton’s “narrower advantage among likely voters, just beyond the poll’s 4.5 percentage-point margin of error, could reflect weaker engagement among her supporters”, according to the newspaper.
So Democrats close to Clinton were furious Saturday that her comments were seen as controversial. “Would you like me to sit there and say that Hillary Clinton is accountable for cop killings?” “We’re moving to the part of the election process where there’s a lot less persuasion of new voters and more persuasion of the people who like you to turn out and work to elect you”, he added.
The remark, which some observers compared to 2012 GOP nominee’s infamous “47 percent” comment that undermined his standing with many voters – for which he was forced to apologize -appeared poised to roil an already polarizing and volatile race where both candidates have struggled to connect with key voting blocs.
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Trump’s son Eric posted a photo on Twitter of his father’s supporters packed into a sports arena for a late Friday rally.
