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Hillary Clinton was right about ‘deplorables’ — now they’re storming out of the basket

Hillary Clinton arriving at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Anyone who observed Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, saw video of his more aggressively violent supporters, or read their online comments knew exactly what Hillary Clinton was talking about when she said, “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? 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 11 million.”

This was not a slam against “regular working-class Americans”; this was all about the type of Trump supporters we saw this week in Charlottesville, Va. Clinton, admittedly, was “grossly generalistic” about the percentage, but her much-criticized remarks were spot-on, and they need to be restated again and again.

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The growing displays of racial hatred; the part that Trump, as candidate and president, has played in fanning the flames; and his bizarre and cowardly reluctance to immediately criticize that part of his so-called base are a national disgrace. Trump has shown again that he is unfit to lead the nation.

Richard Feinberg
Boston