WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) – Hillary Clinton verbally banished half of Donald Trump’s backers to a “basket of deplorables,” and the Republican presidential nominee quickly pounced, saying Saturday she had smeared many Americans and would pay a heavy political price.
“Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard-working people. I think it will cost her at the polls!” Trump said in a tweet.
Clinton, who has said she is the candidate who can unify a divided country, made the comment at an LGBT fundraiser Friday night at a New York City restaurant, with about 1,000 people in attendance.
“To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it,” she said.
“And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now how 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,” said the Democratic nominee, who was the country’s top diplomat during President Barack Obama’s first term.