Hillary Clinton Called Half of Trump Supporters a "Basket of Deplorables"
"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of [Donald Trump's] supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it," Hillary Clinton told the crowd at an LGBT fundraiser on Friday night.
Already, Clinton's controversial comments have been gleefully dubbed "Hillary's 47% moment" by alt-right website Breitbart.com, referring to Mitt Romney's comments during the 2012 election when he said the 47 percent of the country that supported President Obama had a victim mentality and were dependent on the government.
She continued by characterizing half of Trump's supporters as "irredeemable" and "not America," adding, "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 have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric."
Trump, of course, responded on Twitter.
Is Clinton actually incorrect here? Perhaps "deplorables" was a poor word choice. After all, if elected she would be president of all Americans and characterizing citizens as "deplorable" is not a good look. But let's look at some facts about Trump's supporters:
They are more likely to describe Africans Americans as "criminal," "unintelligent," "lazy," and "violent."
Half think black people are more violent than white people.
64% believe Muslims should be subject to more scrutiny.
29% think climate change isn't real.
One-third of his supporters in South Carolina want to ban gays and lesbians from entering the country.
20% of his base in February said freeing the slaves after the Civil War was a mistake
Those are staggering numbers in support of some pretty deplorable beliefs.
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