Mike Huckabee says Donald Trump's supporters are using Hillary Clinton's characterization of them as a "basket of deplorables" to pump up more support for the Republican presidential candidate.
"In the great American 'Yankee Doodle' tradition, the millions of voters who've been slandered have adopted that phrase as a badge of honor," Huckabee said Monday on his Facebook page.
The former Arkansas governor was referring to the popular song used by the British used to taunt their foes during the American Revolution, only to have it adopted as rallying cry by Americans.
At a fundraiser last Friday, Clinton said, according to Variety, "To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables … 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."
Trump supporters quickly responded to the remarks, taking to Twitter and other social media to embrace themselves as Clinton's "deplorables."
"'Proud Member of the Basket of Deplorables' T-shirts are already for sale on the Internet," Huckabee noted. "So Hillary can finally lay claim to having created a few private sector jobs."
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