CBS: Hillary Clinton, speaking Friday at a big-ticket fundraiser in New York City, said half of Donald Trump’s supporters could be categorized into a “basket of deplorables,” implying that his backers hold “irredeemable” views on issues of race, gender and religion.
“To just be grossly generalist, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call ‘the basket of deplorables,’” Clinton told donors gathered at a Manhattan restaurant. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, 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,” she continued, referencing Trump’s campaign hire of Breitbart News’ Steve Bannon. “He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”
The Democratic nominee noted that “some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but they are not America.”
Clinton, who was introduced by celebrities Laverne Cox and Barbra Streisand, went on to describe the “other basket.”
“The other basket, and I know because I look at this crowd, I see friends from all over America here…But that other basket of people are people who feel that 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,” she said. “They are just desperate for change. Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.”
In a statement Saturday afternoon, Clinton later walked back her estimate that “half” of Trump’s supporters were deplorable, saying it was “wrong.”
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” she wrote. But she went on to list other “deplorable” developments in the Trump campaign, including his hiring of a “major advocate” for the alt-right, his attack on a federal judge for his Mexican heritage, and his criticisms of a Gold Star Muslim family.
“I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign,” she promised.
Outrage spread on Twitter almost immediately after Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” line, which GOP pollster Frank Luntz noted was similar to the campaign-sinking “47 percent” comments made by Mitt Romney in 2012.
Tonight, Hillary Clinton just had her "47 percent" moment.
Expect poll numbers to get even tighter after this one. #Deplorables
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 10, 2016
Trump’s children mocked Clinton further on Twitter, using trending hashtags like #basketofdeplorables to defend their father:
Look at the #BasketOfDeplorables in Pensacola Florida last night! What a horrible statement. #CrookedHillary pic.twitter.com/GfevT0KUjd
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) September 10, 2016
You know what's #deplorable? Attacking hard working Americans, upset because their jobs have been sent abroad by politicians like Hillary
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 10, 2016
Trump even fired back at Clinton on the social media platform, blasting Clinton Saturday morning that she had been “SO INSULTING to my supporters.”
Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2016
Later in the afternoon, Trump said he has “respect” for all of Clinton’s suppoers, though they “will never vote for me”:
While Hillary said horrible things about my supporters, and while many of her supporters will never vote for me, I still respect them all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2016
In a longer statement released after his tweets, Trump called Clinton’s remarks “the worst mistake of the political season.”
“[I]nstead 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?” Trump said. “For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans.”
The Clinton campaign, for its part, has backed their candidate’s comments, saying that while Trump’s supporters don’t all fit into that category, several are part of the so-called alt-right “hate movement.”
Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill tweeted this late Friday night:
(1/3) She gave an entire speech about how the alt right movement is using his campaign to advance its hate movement. https://t.co/ZZZv31cFCq
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) September 10, 2016
(3/3) And their supporters appear to make up half his crowd when you observe the tone of his events.
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) September 10, 2016
