Hillary Clinton has privately acknowledged that she had made a mess of things in September when she claimed at a fundraiser in New York City that nearly half of Donald Trump’s supporters were deplorable racists, bigots and homophobes, according to the New York Times.
The detail about Clinton’s reported admission was revealed in a larger story about how her campaign saw her as “an imperfect messenger to connect with Rust Belt voters on issues like global trade deals, which she had previously supported.”
“The situation was made worse in September, when Mrs. Clinton described half of Trump supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables.’ Afterward, she told one adviser that she knew she had ‘just stepped in it,'” the Times story added.
Prior to the Sept. 9 fundraiser, Clinton said nearly the same thing in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2. Aides said the criticism was meant to be a pinpoint strike on Trump’s support from the so-called Alt-Right, which peddles theories alleging the supposed superiority of whites and the idea that the Jews control the world.
However, the difference between what Clinton said in the Channel 2 interview and what she said at the fundraiser in New York City is that, at the fundraiser, she said about “half” of Trump’s supporters were “irredeemable” and “deplorable.”
In doing this, she effectively expanded what was supposed to be a specific strike on a niche group into an all-out barage on those who were even moderately interested in voting for the Republican candidate.
Later, at a rally in early November, she seemingly resurrected part of her “deplorables” criticism after a protester interrupted her at a rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“[Y]ou know, I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and behavior of people who support Donald Trump,” she said in what appeared to be an off-the-cuff riff aimed at her heckler.
“It is time for us to say, ‘No! We are not going backwards, we are going forwards into a brighter future,'” she said as her supporters cheered her on.
Clinton went on to lose the major Rust Belt states, including Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, on Nov. 8 to Trump, who was declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election early Wednesday morning.
