Hillary Clinton told a private fundraiser in February that Bernie Sanders supporters were "children of the Great Recession" who were "living in their parents' basement" — and those traits led them to back the Vermont senator.

Clinton's comments, at an event in McLean, Va., hosted by former U.S. Ambassador Beatrice Welters, were recorded and leaked to The Washington Free Beacon, which released it on Friday.

The remarks, during a question-and-answer period, had been hacked from the email account of a Clinton campaign staffer, according to the Free Beacon.

They start at the 24:45 mark of the audio provided by the Free Beacon.

"They feel they got their education — and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves," the Democrat said. "They don’t see much of a future."

Clinton cited a conversation she had with "a group of young black millennials."

"One of the young women said: 'You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don’t believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.'

"That is a mindset that is really affecting their politics," Clinton told the group.

"If you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing."

Clinton added that "I think we should all be really understanding of that and we should try to do the best we can to not be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism.

"You want people to be idealistic," she added. "You want them to set big goals — but to take what we can achieve now and try to present them as bigger goals."

Clinton also told the group that she would likely cancel a major upgrade to the nation's nuclear weapons program.

"I certainly would be inclined to do that," she said in response to a question about the scaling back the Long Range Stand-Off missile program.