Geist: History Will Remember HRC’s ‘Deplorables’ Comment As Her ’47 Percent’ Moment

Many people would argue that a leaked audio tape from 2012 is what doomed Governor Mitt Romney‘s chances of winning the White House. The moment in question, first released by Mother Jones before the 2012 election, showed Romney play into the exact stereotype that many alleged of him: that he was a stuffy, out-of-touch, Northeastener willing to write off nearly half the country.

In the audio from a private fundraiser, Romney said:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.

He continued, “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The infamous tape was invoked on Friday’s Morning Joe by Willie Geist, who drew the connection to the Hillary Clinton “deplorables” gaffe from earlier this year. The former Secretary of State and Democratic nominee, who lost a crushing upset in the presidential election to Donald Trump, told a fundraiser crowd in September, “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, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

Republicans, and Trump, pounced; it’s a blow Clinton never really recovered from, limping across the finish line on election day behind her GOP rival. “We talked about it a lot in real time, but not as much in post-mortem,” Geist said Friday about the deplorables flap. “That comment hit so hard to so many people in the states that decided the election. I think when history looks at it, it will be her ’47 percent’ comment.”

Watch above via MSNBC.