“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.
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“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right?”
Romney, in comments unearthed from a closed-door fundraiser, cited 47 percent of people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it”.
The other basket of Trump’s supporters constituted individuals desperate for change who felt let down by the government and the economy, Ms Clinton added.
Clinton has made similar comments in the past.
The dismissal of so significant a portion of the electorate immediately called to mind then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s captured-on-video comment in 2012 that 47% of the US electorate believed they were victims and were dependent on government entitlements and thus were guaranteed Obama voters.
The latest RealClearPolitics national average showed Clinton clinging to a 2.7 percentage-point lead over Trump, much smaller than the almost 8 percentage-point lead she enjoyed shortly after the Democratic National Convention in late July.
Mike Pence, governor of IN and Donald Trump’s running mate, said Thursday that it’s “inarguable” Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “stronger leader” than President Barack Obama.
“It was with us for months, the smell”, Trump said. So let me just say, from the bottom of my heart – they are not a basket of anything.
He told a crowded rally in Pensacola that if Iran’s “little boats” circled America’s “beautiful destroyers” during his presidency, “they will be shot out of the water”. “I think it will cost her at the Polls!”. “So just eliminate them from your thinking, because we’ve always had an annoying prejudicial element within our politics”.
Clinton made her remarks about Trump’s supporters at a lavish event that featured performances from Barbra Streisand and Rufus Wainwright.
According to average ticket prices and attendance figures provided by the campaign, Clinton raised around $6 million at the fundraiser, only the sixth she has opened to press.
The comment was reminiscent of Trump’s January description of the loyalty of his supporters.
But when walking back the remarks, Clinton also vowed to continue “calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign” while emphasizing that she still wanted to be seen as a candidate of unity. Former New York Gov. George Pataki, at that time a primary rival, tweeted that he wasn’t sure “what luxury spider-hole” Trump hid in on 9/11, “but I saw Americans come together that day”.
In her statement Saturday, Clinton was emphatic in condemning what she said was Trump’s racially insensitive campaign.
“It’s deplorable that he’s attacked a federal judge for his ‘Mexican heritage, ‘ bullied a Gold Star family due to their Muslim faith, and promoted the lie that our first black president is not a true American”, she said.
“I was a senator from New York”, Clinton said Tuesday in Tampa.
Supporters applauded Clinton’s comment, but it quickly earned her a hailstorm of criticism from the right. “How can she be President of our country when she has such contempt and disdain for so many great Americans?” “Real strength is leveling with the American people and making it clear we will defeat ISIS”.
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Given about 40 percent of Americans support Trump in the polls, Clinton appeared to be slapping the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” label on about 20 percent of the country. “Now is the time to show Hillary the consequences of her words”, he wrote to supporters.
