Hillary Clinton Privately Acknowledged She ‘Stepped In It’ After ‘Deplorables’ Comment

According to The New York Times, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton privately told her staff that she made a huge error when she denounced her Republican opponent Donald Trump‘s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”

The Times piece details Bill Clinton‘s failed attempt to get his wife to campaign for rural and working class white votes, which the Clinton campaign ultimately chose not to do. For example, Bill strongly pushed for Hillary to attend a prestigious St. Patrick’s Day event at the University of Notre Dame. Clinton declined, reasoning that “white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time reaching out to.”

But towards the end of the campaign, Clinton realized she had a problem on her hands. “The situation was made worse in September, when Mrs. Clinton described half of Trump supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables.’ Afterward, she told one adviser that she knew she had ‘just stepped in it,'” reports The Times.

Despite the private admission, Clinton and her campaign largely defended her remarks in public. Clinton later said that she regretted saying that “half” of Trump’s supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic,” but stood by the general sentiment.

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