Former President Bill Clinton stereotyped Donald Trump’s supporters as “rednecks” Tuesday during a campaign stop in Florida.
“The other guy’s base is what I grew up in,” Mr. Clinton said at a Fort Myers rally supporting his wife’s presidential campaign, The Washington Examiner reported.
“You know, I’m basically your standard redneck,” he said to roaring laughter. “I was the first person who ever went to college in my family.”
The former president, 70, grew up in Arkansas where he served as attorney general of the state and then governor.
Mr. Clinton recalled a moment during the Democratic primaries when his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, asked him to campaign for her in West Virginia, even though they knew she would lose.
“She said, ’There’s no way that we can carry it,’ and I said, ’No way,’ ” Mr. Clinton recounted. “I said, ’First of all, [West Virginians] only watch Fox News. But to be fair, they think we only care about our political base and the people that agree with us culturally. And it’s not true, but that’s what they think.”
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He said he went to West Virginia anyway and was met by a bunch of pro-Trump protesters who were “raising Cain.”
“If you really believe that you can make America great again, knowing I know what it means as a white southerner,” Mr. Clinton said he told the protesters. “What it means is, ’I’ll give you the economy we had 15 years ago and the society you had.’ In other words, I’ll move you up on the social totem pole and others down.”
“Hillary wants to tear the totem pole down,” he said.
Mr. Clinton repeated a claim he has made on the campaign trail that Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is racist.
At a rally in Orlando last month, the 42nd president said the slogan was a kind of racist code to “white Southerners,” even though he himself used the exact phrase several times during his political career.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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