CBS Sunday Morning on 10 Sept 2017: interview with Hillary Clinton

The anticipated interview of Hillary Clinton by Jane Pauley on CBS Sunday Morning got into the matter of "deplorable":


There were some memorable verbal gaffes, including when she said at a campaign appearance: "You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables."

"Why do you think that word deplorable had been circulating in your mind?" Pauley asked.

"Well, I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner," Clinton said. "I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable. I thought his behavior, as we saw on the 'Access Hollywood' tape, was deplorable. And there were a large number of people who didn't care. It did not matter to them. And he turned out to be a very effective reality TV star."

Clinton says she thinks her rival's opponents were "already energized" before her "deplorable" comment but conceded: "I'm sorry I gave him a political gift of any kind."

"It was a gift," Pauley said.

"I don't think that was determinative," Clinton said.




Notice that Pauley asked "why" the word "deplorable" was on Clinton's mind, rather than "why" Clinton lumped half of Trump supporters into a "basket of deplorables."

**One year ago [Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016], the NY Daily News wrote:


Clinton ripped 50% of Trump supporters during a LGBT fund-raiser in lower Manhattan Friday evening, grouping them into a "basket of deplorables."

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said to laughter from the "LGBT for Hillary" crowd. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it."




On the same day, the Christian Scientist Monitor wrote:


Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told the country what she really thinks about many Donald Trump supporters when she lumped "half" of them into a xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and sexist "basket of deplorables" on Friday.

Although she cautioned her comments were "grossly generalistic," the blunt commentary at a New York City fund-raiser specifically targeted the nebulous alt-right movement that Mr. Trump has courted, whose philosophical leaders in a press conference this week outlined their plans for an ethno-state where Jews might or might not be welcome.

Mrs. Clinton has never painted Trump as holding such views. But she has used the word "deplorable" to describe some of Trump's rhetoric and last month said the Republican candidate is "taking hate groups mainstream" by turning alt-right websites with 11,000 views to ones with 11 million hits, a notion she repeated Friday night.

But using the quantifier "half" to describe some of his supporters crossed a new line, say critics. It was likened to the 2008 comment by Barack Obama claiming some Americans bitterly "cling" to guns and religion, and Mitt Romney's 2012 statement that "47 percent" of Americans can be written off as unapologetic welfare moochers.


**The Guardian on 10 Sept 2017 noted:


On Sunday, Clinton was unapologetic for the context of her remarks and said Trump's base was "already energized" by his divisive rhetoric before her words became public.

"I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner," she said. "I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable.



**There may be something odd about the transcript. The first mention of the Clinton home on television referred to a suburb (not explicitly Chappaqua) but the transcript reads:


And then, on what she thought would be her first day as president-elect, Hillary and Bill Clinton headed to their home in Chappaqua, New York.



link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-what-happened-sunday-morning-jane-pauley/