Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said Saturday she regrets saying half of Donald Trump’s supporters are from a “basket of deplorables.”
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” she said, adding, “But let’s be clear, what’s really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values.”
The statement continued: “So I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign.”
At a New York fundraiser Friday night, Clinton said, “You know, 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.”
“He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America,” Clinton added. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton: Half Of Donald Trump’s Supporters Come From ‘Basket Of Deplorables’)
Trump’s campaign pounced on these remarks.
Trump responded on Twitter, saying, “Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!”
His running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said at a event Saturday that, “no one with that low opinion of the American people should ever be elected president of the United States of America.”