Hillary Clinton knew she had made a mistake with her "basket of deplorables" comment about Donald Trump, according to a new report.
The New York Times claims Clinton told one of her campaign advisers she had "just stepped in it" following the backlash of her September comments in which she offended many of Trump's supporters.
"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables,'" Clinton, who lost to Trump in this week's presidential election, said at the time. "Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, 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 their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America."
The comment went viral, causing Trump and his supporters to revolt against it. Pro-Trump t-shirts were eventually made using the word "deplorables," and Trump joked about his supporters by calling them his "deplorables."
The Times also notes that Clinton's decision not to court white Catholics — a strategy former President Bill Clinton disagreed with — ultimately cost her votes.
"This is painful, and it will be for a long time," Clinton said in her concession speech Wednesday. "But I want you to remember this: our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love and building a nation that's hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought.
"But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future."
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