Hillary Clinton says she regrets calling half of Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables’
Hillary Clinton has said she regrets taking aim at half of Donald Trump supporters, saying they are “the basket of deplorables” for being “Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.”
Speaking to an audience of donors on Friday the Democratic Presidential hopeful said Trump’s campaign had emboldened the prejudiced supporters.
She said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” Clinton said. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.”
“And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”
Clinton went on to say that such supporters are “not America” and “irredeemable”.
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.
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” she said.
“But let’s be clear, what’s really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values.”
Responding in a tweet, Trump suggested Clinton’s comments would cost her dearly when it comes to voting day.
“Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Jason Miller, said Clinton had “ripped off her mask and revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans.”
Trump’s charitable foundation faced a fine over “illegal” payments he made to Florida’s anti-LGBT attorney general Pam Bondi, while she was considering whether the state should sue him.
Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi was a fierce opponent of same-sex marriage until the very end last year, claiming in a legal brief that “disrupting Florida’s existing marriage laws would impose significant public harm”, and would cause “significant financial and logistical problems”.
Ms Bondi fought bitterly against same-sex marriage until the very week that marriages began, filing desperate taxpayer-funded attempts in successive court battles to stall on the issue on behalf of the state.
The thrice-married politician – who was named ‘Loser of the Year’ for her sad attempts to stall equality – didn’t even give up once equality became law, filing a dispute to avoid shelling out the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the case had racked up in legal fees.
She is now facing questions about her links to Donald Trump.
