The ‘basket of deplorables’ have now had their day – and the tone was set four years ago

Editorial: Hillary Clinton’s 2016 speech did her little good at the time, but as a map of the basic contours of the past four years, it was prophetic

Protesters storm the US Capitol on Wednesday (Reuters)

In the final days of the Trump presidency, it is worth recalling the famous words of Hillary Clinton back in 2016. Some of Donald Trump’s supporters certainly fit the description of a “basket of deplorables”.

Clinton’s speech of September 2016 did her little good at the time, but as a map of the basic contours of the last four years, it was prophetic: “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And, unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now they have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.”

The only thing she got wrong was to underestimate Mr Trump’s own capacity for offensive, hateful mean-spirited action, and the weakness of those around him to restrain him from doing his worst. Even his most scathing enemies – a crowded field – never thought he would incite an insurrection in order to overturn the result of an election. Those who suspected that behind the slogan of “America First” lurked some fascistic tendencies have been proved terrifyingly correct.  

According to one of those in the president’s circle, he is “out of his mind”. The defeat in November was a predictably painful experience for this most thin-skinned of politicians; but the erratic, unbalanced, unhinged character of the man and his presidency has long been apparent.

As we approach Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day it’s worth recalling President Trump’s first hours in office, when his immediate concern was to assert – without factual foundation – that the crowd that gathered outside the Capitol to witness his swearing-in was not only larger than Barack Obama’s but the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”, as his hapless press secretary Sean Spicer claimed. Well, now President Trump has certainly enjoyed the biggest audience ever for the trashing of Congress, which he himself had directed, period. No need, this time, for “alternative facts”.  

Mr Spicer’s angry press conference on day one was a declaration, on behalf of President Trump, of a war on the media and on truth itself. It started that way, and it has ended that way. The deplorables have had their day.

Yet the Trump voters whom Ms Clinton spoke about more warmly – decent and peaceable citizens – remain, those “who feel the government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change”. Sadly, they are just finding out that Donald Trump didn’t care about them either. They deserved better than him for a champion, and better than the deplorable scenes and loss of life in the Capitol.