Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump Has Used 'Prejudice and Paranoia' in Campaign
— -- Hillary Clinton hit back at Donald Trump and his campaign tactics relating to race the day after he called her "a bigot," saying his real message is, "Make America hate again."
"From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia," she said at an event in Reno, Nevada, today.
"Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election. I understand that concern because it’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for president of the United States from one of our two major parties," she said in a speech at Truckee Community College.
Clinton even used Trump’s attacks on one of his fellow Republicans against him, citing his decision to suggest that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was in some way tied to the Kennedy assassination after the National Enquirer printed the claims.
"A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military," she said.
In a new attack line, Clinton said "he’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties."
Clinton went on to accuse Trump of "reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters."
Clinton talked about "the de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign" in light of the hiring of Stephen Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, as the campaign CEO and said it was "a landmark achievement for the 'alt-right.'"
She read some of the right-wing site's headlines, including "Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy" and "Hoist It High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage," which was published in the wake of the shooting at a predominantly black church in Charleston last year.
Clinton also acknowledged that her rival has pledged to "soften" his position on immigration and talked about the teleprompters that appear at almost every Trump rally as of late.
"Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself -- that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere," said Clinton, then said not to "be fooled."
"But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it," she said. "We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that."
Clinton made a clear effort to reach out to Republicans during the speech, even going so far as to quote former President George W. Bush’s remarks at a lower Manhattan mosque following 9/11 and praising Sen. John McCain’s attitude toward his then-rival Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race when McCain said Obama was an American citizen and a “decent person.”
“We need that kind of leadership again,” Clinton said of the famous Republican figures.
