Donald Trump assumed Hillary Clinton was talking about working-class people. Was she? | Getty Simon says Pneumonia, baskets and the media: A campaign in 3 acts

Which basket do you live in?

Let’s say you are a supporter of Donald Trump. And let’s say that no psychotherapist has declared you a danger to yourself or others.


This makes you fortunate. But you are not home-free.

Hillary Clinton wants to stuff you in a basket.

Donald Trump’s basket is filled with the “deplorables,” according to Clinton. They live in the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it” basket.

Which leads me to a question: Who spends their time in a basket?

True, after the campaign the baskets can be repurposed to hold undocumented aliens, who can be picked up by UPS and sent to Central and South America as long as they are properly wrapped in brown paper and sticky tape with air holes provided.

But here is the real problem. Trump is not trying to eliminate such people from his baskets of hate, he is encouraging them. He is, according to Clinton, lifting them up and giving voice to their websites.

“Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable,” Clinton said Friday.

I doubt, however, she really believes that. She is serious about her Christianity, which teaches, I believe, that nobody is irredeemable.

As she has written: “We are only children of God, not God. Therefore, we must not attempt to fit God into little boxes, claiming that He supports this or that political position.”

So even though it must pain her to have people yelling, “Hang her!” and “Lock her up!” at Trump’s speeches (and she would learn what is said at Trump speeches by reading my column) and even though it must be no fun to read of people wearing “Trump the Bitch” T-shirts, that is part of politics, that is part of life.

Hillary admits she should have left the size of the deplorables basket as a metaphysical mystery — how many deplorables can dance on the head of a pin? — but she does not step back from saying there are deplorables.

And Trump makes the mistake of giving his own twisted interpretation to her view.

“We have the support of cops and soldiers, carpenters and welders, the young and the old, and millions of working-class families who just want a better future,” Trump said Monday. “These were the people Hillary Clinton so viciously demonized.”

No, they weren’t. And this is what troubles me most: The automatic assumption that when one talks about racists and xenophobes one is automatically talking about the working classes.

That is b.s. I grew up in a working-class household. My father was a truck driver and my mother a housewife (her word). And if any of us kids came home wearing a “Trump the Bitch” T-shirt, we would have gotten our faces slapped.

In April, I got double pneumonia (anything Hillary can do, I can do better) and was pumped full of fluids and antibiotics and sent home after two nights in the hospital. It was no big deal. But Hillary made her pneumonia a big deal by hiding news of it.

I wish Clinton would hold a sit-down, no-holds-barred, no time-limit news conference about this and all other subjects, rather than the ridiculous cat-and-mouse game she is playing with the press.

Which should not disguise Trump’s far, far worse behavior. “After months of hiding from the press, Hillary Clinton has revealed her true thoughts,” Trump said Monday. “She revealed herself to be a person who looks down on the proud citizens of our country as subjects for her to rule over. Her comments displayed the same sense of arrogance and entitlement.”

You mean the arrogance of hiding tax returns from the media? And the entitlement of a man who has been questioned time and time again by the government for his wheeling and dealing still refusing to release those returns?

Here is Trump on Monday in a passage from his speech that can only be read as hilarious.

“While Hillary Clinton lives a sequestered life behind gates and walls and guards, she mocks and demeans hardworking Americans who only want their own families to enjoy a fraction of the security enjoyed by our politicians,” Trump said.

But what is the difference between Clinton’s gates and walls and Trump’s gates and walls?

His are gold-plated.

Roger Simon is Politico’s chief political columnist.