Hillary Clinton’s campaign is urging her surrogates to blame the media for having a double standard if they’re pressed about her derogatory dig at “half” of Donald Trump supporters being “deplorables,” The Washington Post reports.
Advertisement
Speaking at a LGBT fundraiser in New York, Clinton said Trump had given voice to hateful rhetoric through his behaviour as a candidate for the White House in the November 8 election.
Hillary Clinton has called Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables”, comments that sparked anger from her Republican rival for the White House and quickly went viral.
“And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up.
Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America”, said Clinton, who was the country’s top diplomat during President Barack Obama’s first term.
The other basket of Mr Trump’s supporters constituted individuals desperate for change who felt let down by the government and the economy, Ms Clinton added. However, she added that she would continue to speak out against what she said was intolerance on the campaign trail.
She reiterated that point in her statement Saturday, saying many of Trump’s supporters are “hard-working Americans” who feel marginalized. Trump himself calling it “a new low”, while his campaign called on her to apologize for a sentiment they say betrays contempt for voters. “I regret saying ‘half” – that was wrong”, she said in a statement released by her campaign.
Clinton was a senator from NY when the terrorist attack occurred, serving in her first term.
Clinton on Saturday expressed “regret” for being “grossly generalistic” and using the characterization of “half” – even as she insisted Trump is amplifying bigoted views.
During his speech Friday night in Pensacola, Trump strayed from prepared remarks to suggest that Clinton is so immune from prosecution she could get away with murder.
He says she’s smeared many Americans and will pay a heavy political price.
But Trump’s vice presidential running mate Mike Pence said she had disrespected voters. “And she wouldn’t be prosecuted”.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be attending Sunday’s remembrance at the September 11 Memorial, according to her staff.
Many of Clinton’s fundraisers have been closed to the media, but not the one on Friday night.
Seeking to explain the statements, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a series of tweets after the remarks that Clinton has been talking about the “alternative right”, or “alt-right” movement, which often is associated with efforts on the far right to preserve “white identity”, oppose multiculturalism and defend “Western values”.
Advertisement
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.
