WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) Hillary Clinton verbally banished half of Donald Trump’s backers to a “basket of deplorables“, and the Republican presidential nominee quickly pounced, saying Saturday she had smeared many Americans and would pay a heavy political price.
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Hillary Clinton has straight out called Donald Trump a racist who is “offering a dog whistle” to the most extremist, hateful portions of American society.
The difference this time was that she put a number on it.
Hillary Clinton said Saturday that she regretted describing “half” of Republican Donald Trump’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables” in remarks at a fundraiser. A PPP poll of SC voters in February found that a substantial portion supported banning LGBT people from the United States. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it”.
Republicans instantly cried foul. Tim Miller, a former Jeb Bush spokesman who is no fan of Trump, also said that Democrats should “skip the excuses & move straight to mea culpa”.
Mike Pence, the governor of IN and Trump’s running mate, added: “Hillary Clinton’s low opinion of the people that support this campaign should be denounced IN the strongest possible terms”.
She pledged to “fight alongside the LGBT community”, and said Trump will not support them.
“And he has lifted them up”, Clinton continued.
But Republican strategist Ana Navarro said that Clinton’s remark is still problematic.
One the one hand, both are very broad, extremely negative generalizations about large segments of the American public. “If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?” “I never thought I’d see the day where this has happened to our country”, he added. But she still was generalizing a large segment of the American people.
She then went on to say the rest of the Republican nominee’s supporters were “just desperate for change”.
In this particular statement, Clinton was referring to Trump’s tacit encouragement of the alt-right.
Clinton’s campaign pointed out late Friday that she has spoken at length about the “alt-right” movement and how its members are using Trump’s campaign to advance an agenda of hate. Supporters paid from $1,200 to more than $250,000 to attend.
“If I were to be grossly generalistic, I would say you can take Trump supporters and put them in two big baskets”, Clinton said.
Hillary Clinton greets actress Laverne Cox during the LGBT for Hillary Gala at Cipriani Club on September 9, 2016 in New York City.
The Democratic nominee made similar comments in an interview Thursday with an Israeli television station. “So I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign”.
Remember, this isn’t a new formulation.
Romney’s comments, meanwhile, were made at a closed-door fundraiser at which he thought he was just speaking to his supporters.
-The 47% remark dovetailed neatly with a narrative the Obama campaign had built throughout the summer that Romney was a heartless corporate chieftain.
Trump rebuked Clinton on Twitter, Conway called for Clinton to apologize, and his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, chastised her in a speech on Saturday. But now, the heir to Barack Obama is only 2 to 4 points ahead of trump in certain key battleground states, such as Virginia, Colorado, Minnesota, and even Pennsylvania.
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Is percentage, as Clinton suggested, about 50 percent?
