Donald Trump is Deplorable & So Are a Critical Mass of His Supporters

No doubt you are familiar with Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" remarks during a Democrat fundraiser with Barbra Streisand concerning half of Donald Trump's supporters. If not here they are in all their glory:


You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. 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.


For all the heat Hillary has taken over these remarks (which could account for her overheating at the 9/11 ceremonies yesterday), I largely agree with what she said. It's a question of addition and subtraction. I would have added "anti-Semitism" into the mix of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia while subtracting "half of Trump's supporters". If half of Trump's supporters possessed those characteristics, Barack Obama would not have twice been elected President of the United States.


Nevertheless, there are a critical mass of Trump supporters who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic & anti-Semitic and Hillary is correct to say that Trump has given them a legitimacy they did not have before. In fact, Trump has done to more to legitimize racism and other forms of hatred in this country than anyone since George Wallace before he got shot.


It's a strong statement, but when Trump sees fit to retweet messages from white supremacists we've got a big problem which gets compounded when he didn't want to distance himself from David Duke. Let us also not forget that Trump offered to pay the legal bills of a man who hit another man for no other reason than he was black.







There are a critical mass of Trump supporters who think this act of assault is a great thing.


There are a critical mass of Trump supporters who loved it when he made fun of a reporter's disability.


There are a critical mass of Trump supporters who think Judge Curiel should be removed from the federal bench because of his Mexican heritage.


There are a critical mass of Trump supporters who think all Muslims are the same and see no difference between Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala & the Taliban who shot her.


There are a critical mass of Trump supporters who equate illegal immigrants with murderers.


This state of affairs is possible because Donald Trump is a man of deplorable character.


So honestly Hillary was right on the substance of her argument except that she painted too broad a brush which is something Trump has been guilty of all too frequently where it concerns Mexicans, Muslims and anyone else he doesn't like at a given moment.


The other problem with Hillary's critique is Hillary. She is pretty deplorable herself.