DHAKA: US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has regretted her decision of calling half of her republican opponent Donald Trump’s supporters ‘deplorable’ people.

However, she did not refrain from launching a fierce attack on her competitor and vowed to combat ‘bigotry and racist rhetoric’, BBC reported.

Trump responded to the comment by saying it was ‘insulting’ to ‘millions of amazing, hard working people’.

Opinion polls suggest Trump is gaining on Clinton.

The rivals are neck and neck in the key battleground states of Ohio and Florida.

“To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the “basket of deplorables”. Unfortunately there are people like that and he has lifted them up,” Clinton said in a New York fundraising on Friday (September 9).

The rest of the Republican nominee’s supporters, according to Clinton, were “just desperate for change”.

Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, said, “They are not a basket of anything. They are Americans & they deserve your respect.”

Apologizing, Clinton said, “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ - that was wrong.”

“As I said,” she added, “many of Trump’s supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system is working for them.”

BDST: 1017 HRS, SEP 11, 2016
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