Clinton apologizes after calling half of Trump's supporters "deplorable"

A day after describing half of Donald Trump's supporters as "deplorables," Hillary Clinton is apologizing, reports the BBC.

US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has apologised for calling half of Donald Trump's supporters "deplorable" people.But the Democrat launched a furious attack on her Republican opponent and promised to keep fighting "bigotry and racist rhetoric".Mr Trump had responded by saying the comment was "insulting" to "millions of amazing, hard working people".Opinion polls suggest Mr Trump is gaining on Mrs Clinton.

It's a plain fact that many of Trump's supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic, that his campaign has energized the support of white nationalist groups in particular. One in five of his followers think the emancipation of the slaves was a mistake.

Here's what she said:

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call 'the basket of deplorables.' Right?" the Democratic presidential nominee told donors at the event. "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 offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric."

American media, particularly major newspapers and television news, cultivate the false balance that's required to make insulting these people a political misstep, and the false equivalence to cast it all as a horse race between two equally undesirable nags.

But equivocating like this after a moment of plain speaking is an exemplary Hillary mistake:

How very sad.