HISTORY-MAKER HILLARY REVS UP TRUMP ATTACK
PHILADELPHIA — Democrat Hillary Clinton was met with thunderous chants of “Hillary! Hillary!” as she became the first woman to accept a major party nomination for president — and she wasted no time attacking Donald Trump as careless and unpredictable.
“Do you really think Donald Trump has the temperament to be commander in chief?” Clinton said on the final night of the Democratic National Convention. “Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Clinton also cast Trump as a pessimist who thrives on peddling fear, continuing a theme struck by President Obama on Wednesday night.
“He’s taken the Republican Party a long way from ‘Morning in America,’ to ‘ Midnight in America,’ ” Clinton said.
Later, she portrayed the GOP nominee as all bluster, no substance, using his own acceptance speech against him.
“He spoke for 70-odd minutes — and I do mean odd,” Clinton said. “And he offered zero solutions.”
She accused Trump of ignoring troops “on the front lines,” police, nurses and mothers who “lost children to violence” as she built on her theme of uniting to fix the country’s problems.
“Don’t believe anyone who tells you, ‘I alone can fix it.’ Yes, those were actually Donald Trump’s words in Cleveland then and they should set off alarm bells for all of us. Really? I alone can fix it? Isn’t he forgetting troops on the front lines, police officers and firefighters … doctors and nurses … teachers.”
“It truly is up to us. We have to decide whether we will all work together so we can all rise together.”
Clinton then took shots at the New York billionaire’s business record — something Trump is notoriously sensitive about — slamming him for manufactur-
ing products out of the country.
“Donald Trump says he can make America great again,” Clinton said. “Well, he could start by actually making things in America.”
Facing troubling poll numbers over her honesty and trustworthiness, Clinton — a national public figure for nearly a quarter-century — tried to re-introduce herself to the American people.
“Through all these years of public service, the service has always come easier to me than the public part,” Clinton said. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.”
She told the story of her upbringing, including her own poor mother whose first grade teacher brought lunch for her every day.
“The lesson she passed on to me years later stuck with me — no one gets through life alone,” Clinton said. “We have to look out for each other and lift each other up.”
Clinton capped a full week of speeches from her husband, former President Bill Clinton, President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and her former Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders, hoping to create a post-convention bounce, even as the race remains close with Trump.
“It is with humility, determination and boundless confidence in America’s promise that I accept your nomination for president of the United States,” Clinton said to huge applause here, as “HILLARY” signs and American flags waved.
Clinton also made reference to the historic achievement of becoming the first woman to be the nominee of a major political party.
“When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit,” she said.
Clinton walked out to a screaming crowd and took time to take it in, walking from one side of the giant stage to the other.
She pleaded with Sanders supporters — who have made convention week tense and uncomfortable for organizers with their jeers, chants and protests — to join her campaign and unite.
“I want you to know I’ve heard you, your cause is our cause, our country needs your ideas, energy and passion,” Clinton said. “That is the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America. We wrote it together, now let’s go out and make it happen together.”