In an awkward walk back of her Friday night comments that “you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the “basket of deplorables, ‘” Hillary Clinton said in a statement, “I regret saying ‘half” – that was wrong”. “That may be one conversion therapy I’d endorse”, Clinton joked. 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.
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Trump on Saturday fired back at Clinton on Twitter, saying that she was “so insulting” to his supporters and that it would “cost her at the polls”.
Later in the rally, he again criticized Clinton over what he said was an aggressive foreign policy. Tim Kaine (D-VA), said that Clinton did not need to apologize for her comments. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it”.
Some of those people were irredeemable, she said, but they did not represent America.
“Hillary, they are not a basket of anything, they are Americans, and they deserve your respect”, Pence said in an address to the Values Voters Summit in Washington.
“She said, “Look, I’m generalizing here, but a lot of his support is coming from this odd place, that he’s given a platform to the alt-right and white nationalists, ‘” Kaine said in an interview with the Washington Post”.
According to CNN, Clinton made a statement on Saturday expressing regret at calling “half” of Trump’s supporters deplorable.
Trump’s remarks seemed to play off a line he used during the primary race, in which he said that his supporters were so devoted to him that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose any of them.
Clinton’s comment could nevertheless end up being a boon to Trump.
“She gave an entire speech about how the alt right movement is using his campaign to advance its hate movement”, Clinton’s campaign Press Secretary Nick Merrill tweeted, referring to a speech five days prior to her “basket of deplorables” address on Friday.
At the fundraiser, Clinton bemoaned the people she described as “deplorables”, saying “unfortunately there are people like that”.
The other “basket”, she said, is comprised of people who feel that the government and the economy has “let them down”.
The Republican National Committee also slammed Clinton for being “insulting” toward a swath of Americans.
Comments about voters – especially at private fundraisers – have tripped up presidential hopefuls in the past. Others see Clinton’s statement as more reminiscent of Barack Obama’s 2008 statement where he said certain Americans “cling to guns or religion”.
Donald Trump has arrived at the funeral of conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly.
Trump noted that Schlafly rooted for the underdog, and “the idea that so-called little people, or the little person that she loved so much, could beat the system – often times, the rigged system”.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a LBGT For Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club, in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at an LBGT For Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club, in NY on Friday.
