September 9 marks the anniversary of the day that Hillary Clinton made a remark in the 2016 presidential campaign that galvanized both her own supporters and supporters of Donald Trump, for two different reasons — the infamous “basket of deplorables” comment that Democrats rallied behind in order to remind each other they weren’t taking crazy pills and Republicans gathered around to celebrate their sameness and unity.
Donald Trump wasn’t going to let that anniversary pass without saying something to both try and get in Clinton’s head — he loves to gloat about the outcome of the election and he inexplicably truly believes that he would have won the popular vote as well — and to rally his base behind the same sentiment that unified them in 2016: A mutual hatred of Hillary Clinton and a belief in all the same sexism, racism, and fanaticism that Clinton was giving a description of when she used the phrase.
So this morning, Trump tweeted a video that one of his staffers put together for him, set to what sounds almost like circus music:
Happy Anniversary! #ProudDeplorable pic.twitter.com/iHyeu5a8DD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2018
But what must have seemed like a fun idea to Donald Trump simply comes across as pathetic, desperate, and weak. And what’s worse is the fact that if he were any kind of strategist at all, he would have left out the actual description that Clinton gave for her comment and simply made it sound like she was calling all of his supporters terrible people. Instead, he included the context she meant it in:
You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
The remark caused those very people to go out and buy custom t-shirts that said “Proud Deplorable” — as in, they GLADLY admitted they were all of those things. Trump never differentiated between the people Clinton was describing (accurately, and in this writer’s opinion, kindly) and the half she wasn’t talking about.
Unfortunately, all of Trump’s supporters have now embraced every label she used when she first made that comment because, in order to still be supporting Trump at this point in his presidency, you have to have supported actual policies that were literally each of those things. As President, Trump has absolutely been racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic and put into law policies that enforce that belief system.
In short, Trump’s tweet this morning, intended to be a jab at Hillary Clinton, turned out to be simply a celebration of being, well… kind of assholes, and a celebration of the fact that now the number of Trump supporters who are “deplorables” is no longer just half — it’s all of them.
Featured image via screen capture
