WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton said Saturday that she was wrong to put half of Donald Trump’s supporters in a “basket of deplorables,” but didn’t back down from a description of his campaign the Republican nominee said smeared many Americans and would take a political toll.

Less than 24 hours after she made the comments at a private New York City fundraiser, Clinton said in a statement, “last night I was ‘grossly generalistic’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ – that was wrong.” But she argued that the word “deplorable” was reasonable to describe much of Trump’s campaign.

“He 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,” the Democratic nominee said.

Responding in a statement, Trump said it was “disgraceful that Hillary Clinton makes the worst mistake of the political season and instead of owning up to this grotesque attack on American voters, she tries to turn it around with a pathetic rehash of the words and insults used in her failing campaign?”

Trump added that Clinton was showing “bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans,” arguing that she was “incapable to serve as president of the United States.”

Clinton, who has said she is the candidate to unify a divided country, made the “deplorables” comment at an LGBT fundraiser Friday night at a New York City restaurant, with about 1,000 people in attendance. She has made similar comments recently, including on an Israeli television station. “To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it,” she said, before stressing that other Trump supporters are frustrated and need sympathy.

Trump and his supporters quickly pounced on the remark, arguing that it revealed Clinton as disconnected from struggling Americans.

“Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard-working people. I think it will cost her at the polls!” Trump said in a tweet.

Running mate Mike Pence, in remarks at the Values Voter conference in Washington, shot back: “The truth of the matter is that the men and women who support Donald Trump’s campaign are hard-working Americans, farmers, coal miners, teachers, veterans, members of our law enforcement community, members of every class of this country who know that we can make America great again.”

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