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The Republican presidential nominee has long tried to woo disaffected Democrats over to his party and spent much of his speech linking his anti-free trade policies to Sanders's primary campaign message.

So the latest attempt at Saturday night's rally in small-town Pennsylvania casts Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, as dismissive to those very progressives with whom her campaign has worked to make a tenuous peace.

"Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement-dwellers. Then, of course, she thinks people who vote for and follow us are deplorable and irredeemable. I don't think so," he said at the Manheim, Pa., rally.

Trump chided her "sarcastic tone," noting that "she's a sarcastic person," while chastising Sanders for giving up the fight against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal by endorsing Clinton.

Clinton supported the deal while part of the Obama administration but has since withdrawn her support and promised she would not act on it as written if elected.

"Clinton, if she ever got the chance, would 100 percent approve Trans-Pacific Partnership. ... Our campaign is America's one and only chance to stop this," Trump said.

"What Bernie Sanders did to his supporters was very, very unfair, and they are really not his supporters any longer. They are not going to support Hillary Clinton. I really believe a lot of those people are coming over largely because of trade."

The controversy over Clinton's comments stems from February audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, in which Clinton lamented that Sanders supporters are unrealistically idealistic.

"There’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what it means but it is something that they deeply feel," she said of Sanders supporters, according to the audio.

"Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement," she added, going on to say that many are dissatisfied with their job prospects and that politicians need to understand where they are coming from.

Clinton opponents have taken to Twitter to push their outrage over the comments — the hashtag "BasementDwellers" was one of the most popular hashtags in America by the time of the rally.

But the Democratic nominee's allies and Sanders's own aides have blasted that reading of her comments as a stretch, with her campaign releasing a statement arguing that she is "fighting for exactly what the millennial generation cares about — a fairer, more equal, just world."

"She's inspired by the optimism and the drive of this generation and Sanders supporters across the country — and they've helped her craft and promote the most progressive platform in Democratic party history," the statement added.

Trump started the rally with a keen focus on Sanders, chiding him for ultimately endorsing Clinton and arguing that he betrayed his supporters, who will not follow him to Clinton.

"I'm not a big fan, but one man who knew the dangers of TPP was Bernie Sanders, Crazy Bernie," he said.

Taken as a whole, the move by Trump is a concerted effort to move forward from the controversy surrounding his treatment of a former Miss Universe. The Clinton campaign has forced him onto the defensive since the debate, chastising him for calling Alicia Machado fat for gaining weight after winning her crown.

But while Trump's Republican allies have urged him to move on, Trump has dug in, bashing Machado in a series of late-night tweets earlier this week.

The release of the audio also comes at a tricky time for Clinton, who is falling below President Obama's 2012 levels with young voters — Obama won 60 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34.

While Clinton holds a healthy lead with young voters, polls have shown that about a third are picking third parties. A new Fox News poll from this past week showed Clinton with 39 percent of young voters, with Trump at 27 percent.