Basket Of Deplorables

Hillary Clinton sparked outrage Friday night by saying half of Trump’s supporters are a “basket of deplorables.”

Republicans compared it to Mitt Romney’s statement in 2012 about how 47% of the electorate just wanted free stuff and they’d never vote for him. Also brought up was Obama’s quote in 2008 about how many conservatives cling to guns and religion. Obama survived his statement. Romney did not. Of course only one of those statements was accurate.

Clinton’s actual quote was “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, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”

That’s some pretty mean stuff to say about a quarter of the electorate, even if it is true. It’s true.

Trump has support from the KKK, David Duke, other white supremacist groups, and anti semites. His supporters have attacked people at his rallies and elsewhere. They often chant “lock her up” during his rallies, and other times they state Hillary Clinton should be shot. Many bring Confederate flags to the rallies. Vendors often sell rude and crude anti-Clinton schwag, much of it containing the word “bitch.” Close to my own home, a fellow who lives very close to me said Trump should be president “because he’s white.”

Once again, Trump defies logic and displays hypocrisy by pretending to be offended by Clinton’s remarks. This is a man who’s insulted veterans, war dead, and prisoners of war. He’s insulted women, Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans, our military’s service members, journalists, the handicapped, and once kicked a baby out of a rally. The guy even insults America by saying “make it great again.”

Clinton apologized for her comment and said she was being generalistic. She made that clear in the original quote. Trump has never apologized for any of his insults.

Clinton spoke of other Trump supporters as worthy of empathy and understanding. She described them as 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 desperate for change.”

I went to a Trump rally. Everyone I spoke to personally was very kind to me, though they assumed I shared their views about kicking Mexicans out of the country and putting Hillary in prison. I heard many statements against Muslims, Mexicans and quite a few ideas on violence toward Hillary Clinton.

Not all of Trump supporters are deplorable people. But many are. A Public Policy poll found that two thirds of his supporters believe Obama is a Muslim while 59% believe he was not born in the U.S.A.

It gets better…not. A Reuters poll conducted in June found that 40% of Trump supporters believe blacks are lazier than whites and 50% believe they’re more violent.

A poll taken last January by YouGov found that one third of Trump supporters thought the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was the right thing to do.

Another Public Policy poll conducted last February discovered that 31% of Trump supporters wants LGBT Americans kicked out of the country. Sixteen percent said whites are a superior race while 14 % wasn’t sure.

And guess what! Another YouGov poll from January found that 20 percent of Trump supporters disagreed with Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed Southern slaves. Trump supporters are a bunch of enlightened sweethearts.

I guess Clinton should apologize because when she said half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable, she was off by a few points. She’s right but she shouldn’t have said it. There are plenty of other people to say it, like me.

It’s been said before by a lot of people but I’ll say it again. After Trump is defeated in November all those people who support him will still be here.

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