Stephanie Cutter, who helped run President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign, strongly defended Hillary Clinton on Sunday for saying that half of Donald Trump's supporters were in a "basket of deplorables," saying her only mistake was using the word "half."
Clinton said Friday at a fundraiser that half of Trump's supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamaphobic and the like, before walking back the comments later in the weekend.
Meet The Press host Chuck Todd asked Cutter whether such a remark was difficult to defend, but she emphatically said it wasn't.
"Absolutely not," she said. "I think that her only mistake is that she said half of his supporters were deplorable."
Cutter asked the rest of the NBC panel to consider his rallies and remarks as proof.
"He is attracting a certain type of voter," she said. "She gave a whole speech on describing them. They're called the alt-right, and they tweet racist things. He retweets them. He says it from the stump. From research in this election, we know that his own words, calling Mexicans rapists, criticizing a Gold Star family, these are the most potent things against him with independent voters. So what she said was not wrong. Her only mistake was she described half of his supporters that way."