Donald Trump’s campaign is pouncing on Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark at a fundraising event over the weekend, launching a new ad blasting the Democratic nominee’s comment and accusing her of “viciously demonizing hard-working people.”
The new Trump ad will run throughout the week on broadcast and cable TV beginning Monday, backed by a $2 million ad buy in battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, according to the campaign.
In the ad, a narrator hits Clinton for making the comment while “speaking to wealthy donors” before playing video of Clinton’s remarks. “People like you…you…and you…’Deplorable,'” the narrator says over video of Trump supporters.
“You know what’s deplorable? Hillary Clinton viciously demonizing hard-working people like you,” the ad closes.
Trump also expected to hammer Clinton over the “deplorables” line when he speaks in Baltimore on Monday afternoon, a campaign official said.
The Democratic presidential nominee sparked an uproar late Friday when she described Trump’s supporters at a fundraiser. “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” Clinton said. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.”
Clinton later expressed “regret” on Saturday for saying that half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable.
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Clinton said in a statement in which she also vowed to call out “bigotry” in Trump’s campaign.