WASHINGTON, D.C., — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the 2016 GOP vice presidential nominee, told Breitbart News that he was “taken aback” at Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s disdain for millions of Americans as evidenced by comments she made at a private fundraiser on Friday night with Barbra Streisand about millions of Donald Trump supporters nationwide.
Pence’s comments came in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 at the Values Voter Summit hosted by the Family Research Council (FRC) at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. Pence had just wrapped a speech in which he also ripped Clinton for the remarks on Friday night, where she claimed that half of Trump’s supporters nationally—millions of people—were a “basket of deplorables” who were “irredeemable” and “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”
Pence said that he was “simply taken aback” by Hillary Clinton’s decision to castigate millions of Americans, and was “speechless” about it. He said such comments by anyone, including Clinton, mean that such a person “who has that low an opinion of millions of Americans should never be elected president of the United States,” meaning that this adds to the list of things that already disqualify Clinton from the presidency.
“First I would tell you it’s great to be at the Values Voter Summit,” Pence said when asked about Clinton’s comments in the Breitbart News Saturday interview. Pence continued:
These are the activists, these are people [crucial to success] and that’s why I said at the end I hope everyone leaves here with a burden on their heart to use every hour, every day to make sure that Donald Trump is elected as the 45th president of the United States. There’s so many reasons, from Hillary Clinton’s cascade of corruption flowing out of the Clinton world around the Clinton Foundation from her years as Secretary of State, her failed foreign policy record that I described again today that literally has resulted in large parts of the Middle East spinning apart, policies at home that really represent a continuation of the failed economic policies of this administration, all of those things—all of those things—are reason enough. But I do have to tell you that when I heard of what she said last night, at a fundraiser in New York City with Barbra Streisand, that in her words ‘you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,’ I was simply taken aback. Hillary Clinton believes that millions of everyday Americans who think we can Make America Great Again are in her words ‘deplorable’ and she described them as ‘irredeemable.’ I was speechless about that—I was speechless about it, really, in my speech. My message to her is: Hillary, I got news for you. The millions of men and women, thousands of which I’ve seen since I joined this campaign, but the millions of men and women who are coming out and supporting my running mate are veterans, members of the Armed Services, law enforcement, farmers, factory workers, coal miners, business owners, pastors, everyday Americans for whom faith is important and who believe in the liberties enshrined in our Constitution. I said today that my message to Hillary Clinton is ‘they’re not a basket of anything—they’re Americans, and they deserve her respect.’ Frankly, anyone who has that low an opinion of millions of Americans should never be elected president of the United States.
Clinton has now issued a non-apology apology in response to the overwhelming backlash after her remarks. She says that while she “regrets” having said what she said, she only regrets that she said it about “half” of Trump’s supporters. She failed to specify exactly how many Trump supporters she was now putting in the “basket of deplorables” label.
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” she said in her non-apology apology statement. “But let’s be clear, what’s really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values.”
"I won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign." —Hillary pic.twitter.com/C3Z7GybJ53
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 10, 2016
LISTEN TO GOV. MIKE PENCE’S FULL INTERVIEW ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
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