Story highlights Dana Milbank said "it is probably true" half of Trump's supporters are racist

"You actually can unpack those numbers," he said

(CNN) Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank suggested Tuesday that Hillary Clinton wasn't wrong in issuing her now-famous "deplorable" comments about supporters of Donald Trump.

"As a matter of statistics, it is probably true that people expressing racist sentiment ... constitute more than half of Trump supporters," he told CNN's Brooke Baldwin, channeling the details he provided in his column , published on Monday.

Speaking on "Newsroom," Milbank spoke specifically to Clinton's assertion that more than "half" of Trump's supporters display racist or bigoted tendencies, in the process quoting data as collected by the American National Election Studies.

"You actually can unpack those numbers," he said. "It's really quite shocking. Something like 62% of white voters have these sorts of sentiments, and by better than two-to-one, they vote Republican."

It may be impolitic of Clinton to say half of Trump supporters are racist or otherwise deplorable. But it's true. https://t.co/5BhlXfjbCF — Dana Milbank (@Milbank) September 13, 2016