The presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, has said she will keep “calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric”, as a feud with Donald Trump deepens.
The Democrat made the promise in a statement on Saturday where she apologised for suggesting half of the Republican’s supporters were “deplorable” people.
“Grossly Generalistic”
Mr Trump had responded by saying the comment was “insulting” to “millions of amazing, hard working people”.
Mrs Clinton accepted that she had been “grossly generalistic” and that it was never a good idea.
She made the apology in a statement tweeted on her Twitter handle.
“I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign.” —Hillary pic.twitter.com/C3Z7GybJ53
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 10, 2016
Polls released earlier this week suggest Mr Trump is gaining on Mrs Clinton, and the rivals are neck and neck in the key battleground states of Ohio and Florida.
Also commenting on Mrs Clinton’s statement, Mr Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, said: “They are not a basket of anything. They are Americans & they deserve your respect.”
Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, said Mrs Clinton had shown “her outright contempt for ordinary people”.
Millions of Americans, he said, supported the Republican nominee because they were “sick of corrupt career politicians like Hillary Clinton”.
The BBC reporters that other Republicans mocked Mrs Clinton, sharing photos of the crowd in the Florida venue where Mr Trump spoke on Friday.
The hash tag #BasketOfDeplorables has been trending on social media as indignant Republicans attack Mrs Clinton.
“A candidate who writes off half the country as a #BasketOfDeplorables should be disqualified”, was one comment on Twitter.
Apologising, Mrs Clinton said: “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ – that was wrong.”
“As I said,” she added, “many of Trump’s supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system are working for them.”
But for most of the statement, she attacked her rival, accusing him of building “his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia” and giving a national platform to “hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people”.
“David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values,” she said in the statement.
It was, she said, “really deplorable” that her Republican opponent was linked to people from the right-wing “alt-right movement”.
