Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti said on MSNBC Tuesday that the "basket of deplorables" controversy is working for both presidential campaigns.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton criticized her opponent Donald Trump's supporters with the phrase last Friday at a LGBT fundraiser in New York.
"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. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up," Clinton said.
Meet The Press Daily anchor Chuck Todd made an observation about campaigning against Trump to Continetti, reflecting back to the Republican primary earlier this year.
"I thought the danger here for Hillary Clinton was she got caught doing what Ted Cruz got caught doing, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, which is, they got caught fighting fire with fire with Trump and it never makes them look good. Trump can handle it. Others can't," Todd said.
Continetti agreed and then referenced a Clinton ad that was shown earlier in the segment criticizing Trump based on his previous statements. He called the ad effective, but said that despite the "gazillion" dollars in ads attacking Trump, the polls continue to narrow.
"So none of these ads have really had the desired effect of putting this race away for Hillary Clinton. I think what's going on with the deplorables, is both campaigns, you're right, seem to think it's working for them. What that says to me, it's really base motivation. Trump wants to get his voters excited and defensive, so they go out and show Hillary that she's wrong," Continetti said.
"On the other side, the Clinton campaign wants to make college-educated white voters leery of backing Trump because of the antagonisms," Continetti added.
Trump has been firing back at Clinton over the last couple days regarding her "deplorables" comment. He even had a diverse group of supporters come up on stage at his rally Monday night in Asheville, North Carolina, where they told the crowd why they weren't deplorable.
Clinton did apologize on Saturday for generalizing that half of Trump's supporters are deplorables; however, her campaign has used her comments to put pressure on the Trump campaign to denounce the support of white supremacists like David Duke. Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan member, endorsed Trump's candidacy earlier this year.