Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton declared Monday that Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark was one of the worst things she’s ever heard a politician say.
The D.C. Democrat and Clinton ally told radio talk show host Bill Press that Mrs. Clinton had “some work to do” after Sunday night’s presidential debate against Donald Trump.
She took particular issue with Mrs. Clinton’s comment last month that “half” of Mr. Trump’s supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables.”
“That line, about half of somebody’s supporters being deplorables, was maybe the worst line I’ve ever heard in politics,” Ms. Holmes Norton said, BuzzFeed reported. “You never, I mean, even when you’re running against a bunch of racists, you never take off against the voters. It was a politics 101 foible.”
Ms. Holmes Norton agreed that racist individuals are indeed redeemable, saying poor whites and poor blacks are “in the same boat,” referencing a famous quote by Martin Luther King Jr.
She said Mrs. Clinton “tried to resurrect herself” by explaining during the debate that her argument was with Mr. Trump, not his supporters.
“Within hours, I said I was sorry about the way I talked about that because my argument is not with his supporters, it’s with him,” Mrs. Clinton said Sunday, “with the hateful and divisive campaign that he has run and the inciting of violence at his rallies, and the very brutal kinds of comments about not just women but about all kinds of Americans.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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