Clinton Apologizes For ‘Basket of Deplorables’ Comment
During a fundraiser this past week, Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd full of applause when she called half of Donald Trump’s supporters “deplorable” due to their apparent support of racist rhetoric and practices. To no surprise, she came under fire from many of Trump’s supporters for making the claim.
She’s now apologized.
To be precise, Clinton’s quote had more meat to it than the couple of words many members of the media focused on.
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right?” Clinton said according to the Washington Post. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”
“He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Ironically enough, Trump attempted to use the moment to his benefit by calling out Clinton for disregarding a noticeable portion of the population, which has arguably been a linchpin of his presidential campaign.
While apologizing a few days later, Clinton took the opportunity to remind the world that Trump has the support of voters who approve of his endorsement by white supremacists, harassment of Muslim-Americans and many more offenses.
“That was wrong,” Clinton 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.”
During this important time in the presidential race, with polls saying the two major party candidates may be within a couple poll points of each other, these moments will be sure to impact voters come November. Exactly what effect they have is yet to be seen.