The big political news of the weekend that has conservatives and a lot of the media all worked up, as if there was something controversial about saying it: Hillary Clinton: Half of Donald Trump supporters are in ‘basket of deplorables’.

Here are the quotes they’re freaking out about.

“If I were to be grossly generalistic, I would say you can take Trump supporters and put them in two big baskets,” Clinton said. “There are what I call the deplorables — the racists, you know, the haters, and the people who are drawn because they think somehow he’s going to restore an America that no longer exists. So just eliminate them from your thinking, because we’ve always had an annoying prejudicial element within our politics.”

Shifting to the other half of Trump supporters Friday, Clinton said many of those people feel like the government doesn’t care about them and who just want change in any form.

“That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change. Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.”

I honestly don’t get the controversy. It isn’t as if there hasn’t been enough evidence that Trump not only appeals to the racist far right (the self-styled “alt-right”) but actively courts and encourages them, by retweeting their ugly graphics and even giving them press credentials for the Republican Convention.

Josh Marshall makes an important point about this phony outrage; it’s vital that Hillary Clinton not be intimidated by the chorus of phoniness into backing down from this statement, because it’s true. If she feels she has to say something about it, the most she should do is clarify that when she said “half of Trump’s supporters” are in this “basket of deplorables” she wasn’t speaking literally, but making a broad generalization.

But the reality is that Trump’s campaign is making a blatant appeal to nativists and xenophobes, and the white supremacist movement in the US has been greatly empowered by it. These are facts; trying to pretend they don’t exist serves no one, and is one of the big reasons why a caveman like Trump is within shouting distance of the highest office in the US.

Instant update: as I was writing this article, the news came out that Hillary Clinton did clarify her remarks, to withdraw the “half of Trump’s supporters” claim. Here’s her statement:

Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong. But let’s be clear, what’s really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values. It’s deplorable that Trump 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. It’s deplorable that he’s attacked a federal judge for his ‘Mexican heritage,’ bullied a Gold Star family because of their Muslim faith, and promoted the lie that our first black president is not a true American. So I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign. I also meant what I said last night about empathy, and the very real challenges we face as a country where so many people have been left out and left behind. As I said, many of Trump’s supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system are working for them. I’m determined to bring our country together and make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top. Because we really are ‘stronger together.’

She apologized for the overly general part, but isn’t backing down from her criticisms of the bigotry and racism that’s a major part of the Trump campaign. That’s exactly how she should play it.