Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said that Hillary Clinton’s claim that half of Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables” was the worst comment he’s heard from a candidate for national office in his lifetime.
Pence told Fox News’ Bret Baier that Clinton’s comment wasn’t “off-the-cuff remark,” noting she had said it before. The Indiana governor argued that it was worse than Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comment from 2012.
“For Hillary Clinton to literally — and it wasn’t just the basket of deplorables, but to say that millions of Americans were irredeemable or not American, and then to call them racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamaphobic, I think what you saw there in prepared speech — it’s important your viewers understand that,” Pence said. “This wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark. This was a statement as part of a prepared speech. This ‘basket of deplorables’ is a line that she’s used at least one other time before.”
Baier then asked if the line was worse than former GOP nominee Mitt Romney telling donors that 47 percent of Americans were dependent on government four years ago, to which Pence said yes.
“I think her decision to smear millions of Americans whose only hope and desire is to make America great again is the worst statement I have ever heard from a candidate for national office in my lifetime,” Pence said.
Earlier Monday, Trump himself levied multiple attacks against Clinton for the comment, especially in a speech before the National Guard Association’s general conference in Baltimore. He also told Fox News that Clinton’s remark was the biggest mistake of the 2016 campaign.
“Personally, when I heard it I thought that it was not something that was within the realm of possible, that she would have said it. And I said to my people: ‘I don’t believe that she said it. I think you have to check it, because there’s no way that she said this,'” Trump told “Fox & Friends.” “And she actually did, and she even really doubled up, because it was said with such anger, such unbelievable anger.”
“I think this is the biggest mistake of the political season,” Trump said. “I really do. When I saw this in its full form, and I saw the anger with which she said it — I mean, the way she spoke — I think it’s the single biggest mistake of the political season.”
