NEW YORK, Sept. 10 (UPI) — Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, speaking to wealthy donors at a fundraising event open to the press, said half of Donald Trump supporters are in “the basket of deplorables,” people who are racist, xenophobic, homophobic and misogynistic, a comment she later said she regretted.
The comment drew a sharp rebuke from the Trump campaign, which demanded an apology for disparaging millions of Americans.
Clinton, speaking to donors in New York, said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,'” Clinton said. “Unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
The other half, Clinton said, were millions of people fed up with government’s failure to address problems in their lives. They might not agree with Trump entirely, but see him as a new path forward for a broken system, she said.
“They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different,” Clinton said. “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with, as well.”
Clinton attempted to walk back the comment Saturday, releasing a statement expressing regret for speaking in generalities.
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Clinton said in a statement.
“I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign,” she went on, but she offered an olive branch of sorts to downscale Trump voters. “I also meant what I said last night about empathy, and the very real challenges we face as a country where so many people have been left out and left behind. As I said, many of Trump’s supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system are working for them. I’m determined to bring our country together and make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top.”
For his part Friday, Trump told supporters at a rally in Pensacola, Fla., that Clinton could commit brazen murder and still would not be prosecuted for it, a reference to the FBI’s decision not to press criminal charges for her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
“Because she’s being so protected, she could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching right smack in the middle of the heart and she wouldn’t be prosecuted, OK?” he said.
Clinton’s remark quickly became the top trending topic on Twitter, with the hashtag #BasketofDeplorables drawing angry comments from Trump supporters, but also sarcastic jabs at them, as well.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill did not back away from the comment, reviving Clinton’s charge that Trump’s campaign has become a vessel for the alternative right, members of which frequently resort to ad hominem attacks based on race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
“Obviously not everyone supporting Trump is part of the alt right, but alt right leaders are with Trump,” Merrill said on Twitter. “And their supporters appear to make up half his crowd, when you observe the tone of his events.”
Trump’s campaign manager Kellyann Conway responded on Twitter, calling on Clinton to apologize.
“Nick, it’s simply untrue. Come to an event. Talk to real people who aren’t donors,” Conway tweeted to Merrill. “Or better: have Hillary apologize.”
Clinton’s remark drew comparisons to one made by Mitt Romney four years ago, when he was secretly recorded by a bartender at a closed-door fundraiser, criticizing the 47 percent of Americans who receive some form of government assistance for supporting President Barack Obama as a means of self-preservation.
