Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, under fire for calling half of Donald Trump's supporters "deplorables," said Saturday she regretted the remark, but insisted she would not stop calling out "bigotry and racist rhetoric" in the campaign.
Clinton earned a firestorm of criticism after she slammed Trump voters at a fundraiser late Friday in New York, saying, "To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables."
"The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up," she said.
Trump, 70, angrily fired back, calling her words "insulting." Her comments instantly went viral, and Clinton was the target of a fiery Twitter backlash.
"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 released by her campaign.
But she then went on to list a number of "deplorable" things about Trump.
"It's deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people," she said.
"It's deplorable that he's attacked a federal judge for his 'Mexican heritage,' bullied a Gold Star family because of their Muslim faith, and promoted the lie that our first black president is not a true American," she said.
"So I won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign."
Clinton, 68, reiterated that many of Trump's supporters are "hard-working Americans" who feel marginalized.
"I'm determined to bring our country together and make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top," she said.