Trump Supporters Embrace “Deplorable” Label on Twitter

At least 15 shirts bearing the epithet are available online

September 12, 2016 9:00 am

The deplorables are not going down without a fight.

Ever since Hilary Clinton threw out a seemingly offhand, “grossly generalistic” remark at a fundraising event on Friday, noting that “you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” she’s been doing damage control. 

Although Clinton later expressed “regret” for the remark, Trump wasn’t satisfied, noting that her contempt for millions of Americans disqualified her from being president and hammering the point home in a new ad. 

Clinton isn’t the first candidate to make a remark along the campaign trail that exploded on social media. Trump does it routinely. But coming from Hillary, a candidate who is known for her discipline, it seemed more likely to resonate, drawing comparisons to Romney’s infamous comment about the “47 percent” of voters whom he said are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims…” and “pay no income tax.” It also brought to mind Obama’s notorious observation that some people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…to explain their frustrations.”

It’s worth noting that all of these comments about voters were delivered during fundraising events. 

As for the deplorables,  many seem to be embracing the epithet. There are currently 15 t-shirts bearing the phrase available for sale on RedBubble.com, and a growing number of Twitter users have begun to advertise their deplorability in their handles, often while tweeting out messages that are, well, kind of deplorable! 

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