Pence Blasts Clinton: Trump Backers ‘Are Not A Basket Of Anything’

The controversy around Hillary Clinton saying “half” of Donald Trump’s supporters fall into “the basket of deplorables” is what Clinton’s top aides have always been anxious about: a situation in which her trademark caution elevates an inartful comment. “Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of wonderful, hard working people”.

“I certainly don’t think she helped herself”.

Trump, a NY businessman who has never run for political office before, regularly says things that some consider insulting, racist or off-color.

Speaking at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City on September 9, 2016, Clinton said that Trump’s supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic”.

“To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables”, Clinton said.

Going forward, Clinton aides plan to force Trump to talk about racist elements behind his campaign – like she did last month with a speech claiming far-right groups are having an outsized influence – while framing Clinton’s admission of a mistake as something that Trump would never do.

The remark was an attempt to explain Mr. Trump’s support, which has him running neck-and-neck with Mrs. Clinton in some recent polls.

She added, “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 offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric”.

“We are facing a candidate with a long history of racial discrimination in his business, who traffics in toxic conspiracy theories like the lie that President Obama is not a true American”, Clinton said.

Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonTrump, Clinton visit ground zero on 9/11 anniversary Poll: Republicans lead Senate races in four battleground states Sanders, Warren lend star power to Dem Senate hopefuls MORE’s campaign is stiffening up its response to backlash from her “basket of deplorables comment”, criticizing Trump’s defense of some of his extreme supporters.

Her remarks Friday night at a fundraising event in NY drew sharp criticism from the Republican nominee and his running mate, Mike Pence, who said it revealed her disdain for the American people. A majority of voters – 60 percent – view both candidates as not honest or trustworthy, and about 3 in 10 voters say they are undecided or might change their mind in the time remaining. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Clinton had earlier divided Trump’s supporters into “two big baskets”, what she called “the deplorables”, in an interview with Channel 2 News Israel that aired on Thursday.

“Let me just say, from the bottom of my heart, Hillary, they are not a basket of anything”, Pence continued. I also meant what I said last night about empathy, and the very real challenges we face as a country where so many people have been left out and left behind. But when they were widely reported, Trump and Republicans quickly pounced on the remarks, which drew comparisons to President Barack Obama’s comments about clinging to “guns and religion” at a 2008 campaign fundraiser and Mitt Romney’s “47 per cent” remark in 2012.

Trump argued that the remark revealed that Clinton is disconnected from struggling Americans.

Donald Trump says that he had a “thoughtful and substantive” conversation with Mexico’s president on Wednesday as he kicks off a long-awaited speech on immigration.

The remarks in front of the LGBT crowd echoed Mrs. Clinton’s previous dismissals of the people who support the Republican nominee, but this time she put a number on it. And many GOP voters either don’t pay federal income tax because they don’t make enough money and/or are also at least partially reliant on government programs.

During a spirted speech focused on the LGBT community, Clinton also made a joke that referenced conversion therapy, type of counseling created to urge gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender children to change their sexual orientation. We’re going to take on youth homelessness, and as my wonderful, extraordinary, great daughter said, we are going to end the cruel and unsafe practice of conversion therapy.

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, a notable Trump critic, tweeted, “Hillary Clinton’s creed: “All men are created equal” – except for those I’ve consigned to the basket of deplorables, who are irredeemable”. “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.