Donald Trump declared that Hillary Clinton’s “true feelings came out” when she described “half” of his supporters as “deplorables,” as his campaign continued to punish her for the potentially-damaging statement.
“For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans,” Trump said in an official statement. “How can she be president of our country when she has such contempt and disdain for so many great Americans?”
Clinton faulted Trump for appealing to “racist, sexist, homophobic” voters, although she allowed that he also represents struggling working-class Americans. “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” she said in New York City at a fundraiser on Friday. “But that other basket of people are people who feel that the 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, and they’re just desperate for change.”
She walked back that comment Saturday morning. “I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Clinton said, before continuing her critique of Trump. “He has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people.”
Trump dismissed the follow-up statement. “Isn’t it disgraceful that Hillary Clinton makes the worst mistake of the political season and instead 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?” he asked.
