President Donald Trump compared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D., Calif.) "crumbs" remarks about the recent wave of worker bonuses to Hillary Clinton's infamous comment about Trump's supporters being part of a "basket of deplorables" on Thursday.
Addressing congressional Republicans in West Virginia, Trump touted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—which passed with no Democratic votes in Congress—that he signed last month. Hundreds of companies have announced wage hikes and four-figure bonuses in response to the overhaul, which included a dramatic slashing of the corporate tax rate.
Pelosi has been one of the tax law's strongest critics, however, calling it "Armageddon" and repeatedly dismissing the bonuses as "crumbs" for workers.
Trump said he had just been told by a man that he had $221 more in his latest paycheck, which the president said was a result of the new tax law that also cut individual rates.
"Then we got hit with these corporations giving tremendous bonuses to everybody that Nancy Pelosi called crumbs. That was a bad—that could be like deplorable—does that make sense?" Trump asked. "Deplorable and crumbs? Those two words, they seem to have a resemblance. I hope it has the same meaning."
"But she called it crumbs, when people are getting $2,000 and $3,000 and $1,000. That's not crumbs," Trump added. "That's a lot of money."
During the 2016 campaign, Clinton said that half of Trump's supporters could be placed in a "basket of deplorables."
"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," she said, drawing cheers. "Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it."
Clinton was criticized for writing off so many people as bigoted and quickly walked back the remarks. Since then, many Trump supporters have proudly called themselves "deplorables."