Clin­ton seizes of­fen­sive as Trump’s woes mount

The Myanmar Times - - World -

DON­ALD Trump’s pres­i­den­tial hopes suf­fered a pun­ish­ing new set­back as au­thor­i­ties clamped down on his char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion, while Hil­lary Clin­ton seized the of­fen­sive to brand the Repub­li­can an un­scrupu­lous busi­ness­man.

With just five weeks to go be­fore the Novem­ber 8 elec­tion, Mr Trump is strug­gling to re­gain his foot­ing against a surg­ing Ms Clin­ton and climb out of one of the dark­est pe­ri­ods of his White House cam­paign.

Al­ready weak­ened by dam­ag­ing rev­e­la­tions about his taxes, Mr Trump was hit with an or­der by New York At­tor­ney Gen­eral Eric Sch­nei­der­man that the Don­ald J Trump foun­da­tion must “cease and de­sist from so­lic­it­ing con­tri­bu­tions” in New York.

The no­tice in­formed the char­ity that it had en­gaged in fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that were not per­mit­ted un­der the law be­cause it had not been reg­is­tered with au­thor­i­ties.

With Team Trump on the de­fen­sive af­ter leaked doc­u­ments sug­gested he may have paid no in­come tax for two decades, Demo­crat Ms Clin­ton rounded on him as a real es­tate bully who cares lit­tle for his fel­low coun­try­men.

The pair face off in their sec­ond show­down on Oc­to­ber 9.

Mr Trump used an ap­pear­ance be­fore mil­i­tary vet­er­ans in Vir­ginia to pound the for­mer sec­re­tary of state once more for han­dling clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion via a “base­ment” pri­vate email server.

But he ap­peared to stum­ble when he ad­dressed the men­tal prob­lems fac­ing mil­i­tary per­son­nel and sug­gested some were re­turn­ing from bat­tle ill-equipped to cope with de­bil­i­tat­ing con­di­tions.

In re­cent days, Mr Trump’s strong­est line of at­tack has been per­sonal, and of a rare bru­tal­ity even for him: He mocked Ms Clin­ton over the week­end for com­ing down with pneumonia and even ques­tioned her fidelity to her hus­band.

“Hil­lary Clin­ton’s only loy­alty is to her fi­nan­cial con­trib­u­tors and to her­self,” he said.

“I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth. And re­ally, folks, re­ally, why should she be, right?” said the Man­hat­tan bil­lion­aire, who re­vived talk of Bill Clin­ton’s past in­fi­deli­ties fol­low­ing his lack­lus­tre de­bate per­for­mance.

Mr Trump dodged ques­tions about his tax record. He re­port­edly took mas­sive tax breaks on fail­ing busi­nesses, earn­ing mil­lions while share­hold­ers and in­vestors swal­lowed the losses and contractors went un­paid.

Polls re­leased by Politico/Morn­ing Con­sult and CNN/ORC showed Ms Clin­ton with a six-point and five­point lead, re­spec­tively.

A fresh Quin­nip­iac bat­tle­grounds poll showed Ms Clin­ton lead­ing in Florida, Penn­syl­va­nia and North Carolina, but trail­ing Mr Trump in Ohio.

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Photo: AFP

Demo­cratic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Hil­lary Clin­ton greets sup­port­ers dur­ing a cam­paign rally in Akron, Ohio, on Oc­to­ber 3.

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