The Republican Party loves to slander and stigmatize members of minority groups, "liberals," gays and many others, but the proved how thin skinned they are when Hillary Clinton rightly called out the misogyny that motivates a significant portion of Donald Trump's base of support. Specifically, at a New York City LGBT gala
fundraiser where Barbra Streisand performed, Clinton said many of the GOP
candidate’s voters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic,
you name it.” All in all, a 100% accurate description of many rank and file Trump supporters, especially those who call themselves evangelical Christians. It got even better when Clinton said, as Joe Jervis reports, the following:
Clinton urged the crowd to volunteer for her campaign, saying: “If you know anybody who’s even thinking of voting for Trump, stage an intervention.” . . . She joked: “That may be one conversion therapy I endorse. Just remember: friends don’t let friends vote for Trump.”
The wailing, whining and crocodile tears now coming from Trump and the GOP underscores the hypocrisy that has become a leading hallmark of today's Republican Party. They believe they can say all kinds of foul things about Hispanics, blacks, Muslim, gays and anyone else who isn't a part of their white "average American" crowd of Neanderthals and that is all perfectly fine. Just don't call Trump supporters out for what they truly are. The New York Times looks at the hypocrisy and feigned outrage. Here are excerpts:
Mrs. Clinton’s comments Friday night, which were a variation of a sentiment she has expressed in other settings recently, came at a fund-raiser in Manhattan.“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” she said to applause and laughter. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
By Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had acknowledged her stumble. “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea,” she said in a statement. “I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong.”
She then used the opportunity to double down on her criticism of her opponent. “It’s deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia,” she said, “and given 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.”
A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Jason Miller, said what made Mrs. Clinton’s comments particularly off-putting was that she made them “in front of wealthy donors” and that the setting and statement, “revealed just how little she thinks of the hard-working men and women of America.”
Mrs. Clinton made a similar remark on Israeli television on Thursday, saying “We’ve always had a kind of paranoiac, prejudicial element within our politic.” But she did not specify how many of Mr. Trump’s supporters fit into that category.
It was the characterization of “half of Trump’s supporters” on Friday that struck some Republicans as similar to the damning “47 percent” remark made by their own nominee, Mitt Romney, in his 2012 campaign against President Obama.
Her remarks on Friday were a more pointed version of her earlier criticisms of the movement her opponent has spurred.
Last month in a speech in Reno, Nev., Mrs. Clinton devoted an address to criticizing Mr. Trump for “taking hate groups mainstream” and “helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party.”
In talking points given to surrogates on Saturday, and obtained by The New York Times, the campaign advised anyone speaking about the “deplorable” issue in the news media to reiterate that while Mrs. Clinton intended to say “some” instead of “half,” Mr. Trump, as she had pointed out in the past, “has clearly brought the alt-right’s hate into his campaign and into the mainstream.”
The talking points advised that anyone who is pressed on the “deplorable” remarks should assert that the news media was holding Mrs. Clinton to a different standard than Mr. Trump, with this suggested rejoinder: “Are they going to make more out of this story than they made out of the racist, misogynistic Trump comments that got us here in the first place?”
True to form, some in the media are carrying water for the GOP on the issue and ignoring the groups Trump insults at nearly every one of his rallies, engaging in their routine false equivalence of Trump's daily outrageous remarks and one by Clinton that is all too accurate. Part of the motivation for this, of course is due to the undeserved deference given to Christofascists who wrap their hatred of others in the cloak of religion. Hate is hate, no matter what the excuse given to justify it. Much of Trumps base is made up of people who simply put are NOT nice or decent people. Hillary got it right.
