Her remarks Friday night at a fundraising event in NY drew sharp criticism from the Republican nominee and his running mate, Mike Pence, who said it revealed her disdain for the American people.
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Apologising, Mrs Clinton said: “Last night I was “grossly generalistic” and that’s never a good idea”.
After her comments were widely condemned, especially by Republicans and Trump supporters, she released a statement on Saturday in part saying she regrets the comments.
In a July speech in Springfield, Illinois, Clinton said the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln has been transformed into “the party of Trump”, and she called it “not just a huge loss for our democracy – it is a threat to it” because her rival’s campaign “adds up to an ugly, risky message to America”. “I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign”, Clinton said.
The former Central Intelligence Agency operative also made a point of bringing up several of the troubling developments Trump was facing just before Paul Manafort left his campaign. The Clinton campaign’s initial response to the comment was to hunker down and hope it blew over, while her aides defiantly took to Twitter, noting some of Trump’s most vitriolic statements.
Hillary Clinton expressed “regret” Saturday for comments in which she said “half” of Donald Trump’s supporters are “deplorables”, meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic-you name it.
Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, said Mrs Clinton had shown “her outright contempt for ordinary people”.
Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence shot back on Saturday. 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.
“Hillary, they are not a basket of anything”.
The Democratic nominee noted that “some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but they are not America”.
Her comment was “reprehensible, despicable, yet revealing”, said Cleveland Pastor Darrell Scott. Pence, the IN governor, said Clinton had insulted “hardworking Americans”.
Bakari Sellers, a Clinton surrogate and CNN contributor, was defiant when asked about the remark, suggesting that it didn’t matter if Clinton referred to half or merely some of Trump’s supporters as “deplorables”. Instead, she apologized for saying that they made up 50 percent of his supporters.
Any American questioning the wisdom of allowing tens of thousands of “refugees” from areas in the world where Islamic terrorists also come from is “Islamophobic” under Hillary Clinton’s definition, and also “deplorable”.
Also Trump’s comments about the esteem of American military commanders can be interpreted as insulting to those leaders in uniform who have spent their life in service for the country, he said, referring to some of Trump’s comments Wednesday night that could be interpreted as insulting toward USA military brass.
Millions of Americans, he said, supported the Republican nominee because they were “sick of corrupt career politicians like Hillary Clinton”.
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said during the 2012 presidential election that 47 per cent of voters are dependent upon the government, a remark that dogged him throughout the campaign.
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As reported by the Washington Post, Trump and his cronies suggested that the original statement was evidence of an elitist mentality in Clinton, and highly disrespectful to part of the electorate.
