Presidential races

Trump: Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ comment the ‘single biggest mistake of the political season’

Donald Trump on Monday slammed Hillary Clinton for her comments that half of the Republican presidential nominee’s supporters could be categorized as a “basket of deplorables.”

{mosads}”I think it’s the single biggest mistake of the political season,” Trump said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”

Trump said that when he heard about his Democratic rival’s comments, he didn’t believe them.

“Personally, when I heard it, I thought that it was not something that was within the realm of possible that she would have said it,” Trump said.
 
“And I said to my people, ‘I don’t believe she said it, I think you have to check it, because there’s no way that she said this.’ And she actually did and she even really doubled up. … It was said with such anger.”
 
Trump said a candidate can’t leave behind such a large group of people.
 
“You’re president of all the people. You’re not president of 50 percent or 75 percent, you’re president of all the people, you’re president of everybody,” Trump said.
 
“You have to be president of everybody.”
 
The Democratic nominee on Saturday said she regretted saying half of Trump’s supports could be categorized as a “basket of deplorables.”
 
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Clinton said in a statement.
 
“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.”