Trump celebrates anniversary of Clinton's 'basket of deplorables' comment
President Trump spent Sunday morning chastising his most prominent political opponents and boasting about the American economy’s current buoyancy.
Trump shared a video on Twitter of Hillary Clinton famously dismissing half of his supporters as bigots who could be categorized as what she called “the basket of deplorables.”
“Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it,” Clinton said at a fundraising gala in New York City on Sept. 9, 2016.
Trump’s new video then cuts to a rally at which the president embraced the phrase “proud deplorable” as a way to capitalize on what he would consider the political elite’s contempt.
“Your voice will never ever be ignored again. They’re all going to be coming after you from now on in this country,” Trump told supporters in the clip. “I took this job on behalf of the forgotten men and women of this country. But guess what? They are forgotten no more. Your dreams are my dreams. Your hopes are my hopes.”
Trump further aligned himself with Americans who feel belittled and mocked by the political establishment by retweeting a video, which is popular among his supporters, of Obama making fun of Trump on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — and suggesting he would never become president — juxtaposed against CNN’s coverage of Trump’s upset on election night.
These jabs at Clinton and Obama were followed by tweets about Trump’s hardball tactics with China to protect U.S. manufacturing. He boasted that the Ford Motor Company killed a plan to sell the Focus Active, a Chinese-made small vehicle, in the U.S. at the prospect of higher U.S. tariffs because of Trump’s trade war with China.
Ford responded to Trump’s tweet with a statement to Reuters that the Focus Active is not built in the United States because its expected annual sales are fewer than 50,000. The company also expressed pride in employing more hourly workers and building more vehicles in the United States than any other automobile manufacturer.
On Friday, Obama delivered a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign urging young people to vote. Although Obama’s assessment of Republicans and Trump received the most attention, the former president also criticized Democratic tactics that rely too heavily on identity politics.
Obama said the notion that Democrats need to choose between trying to appeal to white working-class voters or people of color and LGBT Americans is nonsense.
“And we won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic,” Obama said. “When I say bring people together, I mean all of our people.”
He reminded listeners that his presidential campaigns were successful because they fought for “every vote” and competed “everywhere” — implying that Clinton should have focused more attention on states like Michigan.
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