WASHINGTON _ Hillary Clinton said Saturday that she regretted describing half of Republican Donald Trump's supporters as "a basket of deplorables" in remarks at a fundraiser.
"Last night I was 'grossly generalistic,' and that's never a good idea. I regret saying 'half' _ that was wrong," Clinton said in a statement. She then lambasted Trump for hiring a leader of the so-called alt-right movement to run his campaign, and offered a list of Trump's offensive remarks about Latinos and African Americans.
"I won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign," she said.
The statement was aimed at shutting down the negative reaction by the Trump campaign and preserving Clinton's appeal to moderate Republicans and independents. It came hours after she made the remarks that recalled comments Barack Obama made in 2008 about people who cling to guns and religion, and that Republican Mitt Romney made in 2012 about the 47 percent of Americans who were dependent on the government and would never vote for him.
Clinton told an audience of gay-rights supporters at a fundraiser in New York City Friday night: "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic _ you name it."
She said later that other Trump supporters are "people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change."
Trump's campaign attempted to capitalize on what it considered a major gaffe. Trump rebuked Clinton on Twitter, his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway called for Clinton to apologize, and his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, chastised her in a speech Saturday.
"Hillary, they are not a basket of anything. They are Americans and they deserve your respect," Pence said.
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(Margaret Talev contributed to this report.)
