Failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton doubled down this week on calling half of former President Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.”
Clinton reflected on the infamous and divisive comment she made during a fundraiser in 2016 in a Washington Post op-ed published on Wednesday, adapted from her new book Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty. In the article, the former secretary of state recalled a meeting she had with a former white supremacist who now works to deprogram people leaving hate groups as an entry to discuss her “deplorables” comment, and said the term is “too kind a word” for some of Trump’s most fervent followers.
“In 2016, I famously described half of Trump’s supporters as ‘the basket of deplorables.’ I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia — you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug,” Clinton wrote.
“It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6. The masks have come off, and if anything, ‘deplorable’ is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters,” she continued:
Clinton also addressed part of her 2016 comment in which she said some Trump supporters are “irredeemable” and “not part of America,” writing that “part of me would still say this is objectively true.” She added that “empathy for people you agree with is easy. Empathy for someone you deeply, passionately disagree with is hard but necessary,” and that “as a Christian, I aspire to this kind of radical empathy but often fall short.”
“Talking about the ‘deplorables’ in 2016, I said, ‘Some of those folks, they are irredeemable.’ Part of me would still say this is objectively true. Just look at the lack of remorse from many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who’ve been convicted of sedition and other crimes,” she wrote. “But another part of me wants to believe something else. I’d like to believe there’s goodness in everyone and a chance at redemption, no matter how remote”:
Clinton previously appeared to express regret over her 2016 comment, issuing a statement calling the comment “grossly generalistic” but declining to actually apologize.
The full quote ran as follows:
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. 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.
Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.
However, Clinton has since called for “formal deprogramming” of MAGA “cult members” — a tone she similarly struck in her Washington Post column by discussing her “deplorables” comment alongside her meeting with a former white supremacist who now “works to deprogram and rehabilitate people leaving hate groups”:
“There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” Hillary Clinton told CNN in 2023. “So many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure”:
That comment also received intense backlash from Republicans and conservatives, with some accusing Clinton of wanting to put Trump supporters in “gulags” and “reeducation camps.”