In a statement Saturday afternoon, Clinton later walked back her estimate that “half” of Trump’s supporters were deplorable, saying it was “wrong”.
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“The clear contrast here, is that Mr. Trump is running to be president for all Americans – black, white, Latino, men, women, everybody – and what we saw from Hillary Clinton last night is what she truly thinks about Americans and her actions, her words are what is truly deplorable here”, Miller declared.
She said later that other Trump supporters 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”.
On Friday, Clinton, 68, was speaking at an LGBT gala fundraiser when she called numerous GOP candidate’s supporters “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it”. “And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up”. Nearly immediately after the remarks were widely reported, #BasketofDeplorables began trending on Twitter, with Trump and his supporters stoking the flames online.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks to the press after a working session with national security advisers and experts at the New York Historical Society September 9, 2016 in New York City.
Hillary Clinton told an audience of donors Friday night that half of Donald Trump’s supporters fall into “the basket of deplorables”, meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic…
Some of those were irredeemable, she said, but they did not represent America.
Trump said in a statement Saturday that “her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans”.
“Isn’t it disgraceful that Hillary Clinton makes the worst mistake of the political season and instead of owning up to this grotesque attack on American voters, she tries to turn it around with a pathetic rehash of the words and insults used in her failing campaign?” 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. Trump tweeted Saturday. “While Hillary said frightful things about my supporters, and while many of her supporters will never vote for me, I still respect them all!”
Republicans and Trump supporters responded fiercely on social media to Clinton’s remark.
Clinton made her comments at an LGBT fundraiser in NY late Friday, then walked them back Saturday, saying in a statement that it was “grossly generalistic, and that’s never a good idea”. On the call, the Trump campaign and supporters declared Clinton’s comment reveals she is as an “elitist” who “actually looks down on all of us”.
Of course, while Clinton is taking heat for her comment, Trump’s brand is controversy.
Clinton’s campaign is happy to have a debate about its belief that Trump’s movement is animated by racism, Democrats close to the campaign said Saturday. “I think it will cost her at the polls!”
“This has to do with really trying to make swing voters uncomfortable with the idea of associating with the racist and anti-intellectual voters that make up the energy of the Trump base”, said GOP operative Rob Stutzman, who is supporting neither Clinton nor Trump. Even if the comparison was imprecise – at most, Clinton’s comments referred to about one-quarter of the electorate – the Trump campaign has already sought to use the comparison to further define Clinton in the remaining months of the campaign.
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In his remarks, recorded at a private fund-raiser, Romney asserted that 47 percent of voters “will vote for the president no matter what” because they are “dependent upon government, ” “believe that they are victims, ” and “pay no income tax”.
