Calling Republicans ‘Deplorable’ Was A Scandal Eight Years Ago. Now It’s The Democrats’ Platform

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignited a scandal eight years ago when she wrote off a large portion of the nation as “deplorable” for their support of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

“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 at a fundraiser in September 2016. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

Clinton later apologized, but the remarks defined an elite contempt for Trump’s supporters that would become an explicit staple of Democrat campaigns in 2022 and 2024.

As Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing arguments to voters from the National Mall Tuesday night, President Joe Biden called Trump’s supporters “garbage.”

“Donald Trump has no character,” Biden said, going on to reference a comedian who joked that Puerto Rico was an island of garbage at Trump’s weekend rally in Madison Square Garden.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said.

Harris, meanwhile, fanned the flames of comparing Republicans to Nazis last week after The Atlantic’s latest hit piece painted Trump as a supposed admirer of Adolf Hitler.

“We learned that Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired four-star general, confirmed that while Donald Trump was president, he said he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had,” Harris said in Washington, D.C. last week.

Kelly’s hysterical claims about the former president, however, have been routinely refuted by previous White House officials, including those who’ve become Trump antagonists in the press.

Democrats, including Clinton herself, followed the Harris press conference last week by comparing to Trump’s Manhattan rally Sunday to a 1939 convention of American Nazis.

“Neo-Nazis, fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany,” Clinton said on CNN.

In other words, Clinton followed her “deplorable” act by not just calling the Republican nominee a Nazi but calling all of his supporters Nazis for rallying where a bunch of Nazis gathered nearly a century ago. What would she say about former President Jimmy Carter, who rallied there in 1976 and 1980?

Biden had his own “deplorables” moment during the 2022 midterms when he characterized the Democrats’ political opposition as representative of “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” Now Biden at 81 appears to have completely lost his filter and is saying what he really means by characterizing Republicans as “garbage.”

At this point, however, such remarks are not isolated gaffes by politicians who acknowledge they should know better. Instead, they represent the platform of a political party desperate to stay in power by admonishing the opposition with an undeniable elite contempt.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan's email newsletter here.