A leaked tape released on Friday exposed what pundits believe may be Hillary’s most glaring deficit as a candidate – the "empathy gap" – as she was caught maligning millennial voters who she tossed in a basket of the uninformed "living in their parent’s basement" and hoping that the United States becomes more like "Scandinavia" before saying that she didn’t know if half of them even knew what that meant.
The comments echo a September controversy where Clinton once again took aim not at her opponents but their supporters calling half of Donald Trump’s supporters a "basket of deplorables" that she considered racist, sexist, xenophobic and ultimately backwards while the other half of his supporters were desperate people who are clinging to an unrealistic hope of the past after trade deals wiped out their jobs.
In the most recent scandal, Hillary said that it was her job to serve as a "wet blanket on the idealism" of uninformed Bernie Sanders supporters convincing them that modest goals or what she calls “what we can achieve now” were actually bigger successes through a process of careful rebranding.
Her opponent Donald Trump quickly seized upon these statements at a rally in Pennsylvania decrying Hillary as not only out of touch but likening her to the "devil" incarnate for her negative views of people.
"A new audio tape that has surfaced just yesterday from another one of Hillary’s high roller fundraisers shows her demeaning and mocking Bernie Sanders and all of his supporters," said Trump. "I can tell you Bernie Sanders would have left a great, great legacy had he not made the deal with the devil."
"I really believe a lot of those people are coming over and largely because of trade, college education, lots of other things – but largely because of trade, they’re coming over to our side – you watch, you watch," Trump said to the crowd. "Especially after Hillary mocks him and mocks all of those people by attacking him and his supporters as ‘living in their parents’ basements,’ and trapped in dead-end careers. That’s not what they are."
Later in his remarks Trump unleashed on Hillary’s condescending “temperament” which he feels is off-putting to Americans and took a moment to defend supporters of the progressive Bernie Sanders despite the fact that the two candidates hold a great many more differences than similarities.
"She describes many of them as ignorant, and [that] they want the United States to be more like Scandinavia but that ‘half the people don’t know what that means’ in a really sarcastic tone because she’s a sarcastic woman," said Trump. "To sum up, Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement dwellers. Then, of course, she thinks people who vote for and follow us are deplorable and irredeemable. I don’t think so. We have the smartest people, we have the sharpest people, we have the most amazing people."
Trump may very well be leading people in a disquieting direction, but it is clear that he does not see his role as being a "wet blanket on idealism" crushing the unbridled spirit of the American people – and that may very well be enough that voters overlook his many flaws whether that is right or wrong.
