A former Hillary Clinton campaign manager admitted there’s no excuse for the former first lady’s derogatory comments about Donald Trump supporters, and suggests its simply the latest evidence Clinton is “still struggling” with her embarrassing 2016 election defeat.

Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, appeared on HLN to discuss Clinton’s recent comments in India with S.E. Cupp, host of Unfiltered.

“This was bad. You know, I can’t sugarcoat it,” Doyle said. “She was wrong, and clearly it’s not helpful to Democrats going into the midterms and certainly not going into 2020.

“She’s put herself in a position where Democrats are going to have to distance themselves from these remarks and distance themselves from her, particularly those Democrats that are running in the states that Donald Trump won, like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan.”

Clinton was in India over the weekend to hawk her book “What Happened” when she reflected on the 2016 election during a talk at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai.

“I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward,” Clinton said.

“If you look at a map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle, places where trump won,” she said. “I win the coast. I win, you know, Illinois and Minnesota, places like that.”

Clinton complained that Trump’s campaign “was looking backwards,” and drew support from the racist, homophobic, and uneducated in middle America.

“You didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs. You don’t want, you know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are. Whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it,” Clinton said, mocking Trump’s Make America Great Again message.

She also alleged women were brainwashed to vote for Trump by “ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

Doyle said it seems Clinton is having trouble letting go of the 2016 election, and she would prefer it if her former boss would sulk in the shadows.

“It seems to me she’s still … struggling with coming to terms on how she lost and why she lost, you know, which is human and normal, particularly this kind of level of loss,” she said. “But I do wish she would stop doing it so publicly.”

Doyle’s not the only one.

Clinton’s comments during the 2016 election referring to Trump supporters as “deplorables” served to ignite opposition against her campaign, and many Democratic strategists told The Hill the most recent comments will undoubtedly play into the 2018 midterm election.

“She put herself in a position where (Democrats) from states that Trump won will have to distance themselves from her even more,” one unidentified former senior Clinton aide told the news site. “That’s a lot of states.”

“She’s annoying me. She’s annoying everyone, as far as I can tell,” another 2016 Clinton surrogate said. “Who lets her say these things?”

Republican National Committee Deputy Communications Director Mike Reed contends Clinton’s comments prove Democrats haven’t shifted their brand away from the elitist attitude that cost them the presidency.

“At the NRC, we try not to continue to focus on Hillary Clinton. We really do try very hard,” he said. “But this one is hard to ignore.”

“Putting aside how absurd and wrong she is, rhetoric like this is the reason Sen. (Jon) Tester (a Montana Democrat) was forced to release and ad today, eight months before Election Day, attempting to highlight areas of agreement with President Trump,” Reed said. “The Democrat brand is isolated, elitist, and as out-of-touch as it ever has been.”