Trump calls Clinton a bad influence on kids
Republican has responded to attacks by lobbing exact same accusations at Democrat rival
WARREN, MICH.— The last full week of a presidential election between two widely distrusted candidates began with a flurry of attacks on the subject of trust.
Hillary Clinton argued that Donald Trump cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes. Trump, in yet another speech filled with brazen lies, argued that Clinton cannot be trusted in general.
“Man, does she lie,” he said. “Man, does she lie.” Trump’s I-know-you-are-butwhat-am-I tour arrived in Democratic-leaning Michigan on Monday for another freewheeling rally replete with moments of surreality. Clinton, speaking in hotly contested Ohio, delivered another formal address focused on temperament, a quality on which she is seen to have a major advantage.
“We’ve seen in this campaign that Donald Trump loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he’s gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he’s challenged in a debate. When he sees a protester at a rally. When he’s confronted with his own words. So imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis,” Clinton said at an appearance with a former missile-launch officer.
She also demanded a Trump accounting of “all of his ties and connections to the Kremlin,” saying Russian leader and former KGB man Vladimir Putin knows he can manipulate Trump into being his “puppet.”
All campaign, Trump has responded to attacks from Clinton by lobbing the exact same accusations at her. When she has called him unfit, for example, he has called her unfit.
In speeches and television ads, Clinton has argued that Trump would be a poor role model for America’s children. So, naturally, at a college in a suburb of Detroit, Trump said the same about Clinton.
“I have a son named Barron,” he said, “and let me tell you, she is a terrible example for my son and for the children in this country.”
Trump’s focus in the gym at Macomb Community College was the Clinton email saga that roared back to life on Friday, when FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress to say that emails discovered in the course of another investigation — into the sexting of former congressman Anthony Weiner, it turns out — had prompted additional investigation related to Clinton.
There is no evidence of any Clinton wrongdoing. Comey has faced a firestorm of criticism, some from Republicans and former Justice Department officials, for raising vague suspicions about a presidential candidate so late in an election. And early polling does not suggest that the news will itself cause a massive swing in a race Clinton had led comfortably.
“There is no case,” Clinton said in Ohio.
But Comey’s disclosure has given Trump at least the appearance of ammunition for his core argument — that Clinton is “crooked” — and forced Clinton to return to her leastfavourite subject of campaign conversation. It has also put her in the unexpected position of training some of her critical fire on Comey, the man who declined to recommend criminal charges against her, at a time she had planned to be urging voters to think about Trump.
“How can Hillary manage the country if she can’t even manage her email?” Trump said, a sly reference to a 2008 Michelle Obama comment he has mischaracterized as a jab at Clinton.
The raucous crowd chanted “lock her up.” And Trump warned of a “protracted criminal investigation likely followed by the trial of a sitting president.”
“Hey, this is just what we need,” he said.
Trump faced new questions Monday about his own respect for the law. The New York Times reported that he used a “legally dubious” tactic in the 1990s to avoid paying millions in taxes.
Clinton still has a major advantage in the electoral map. Lagging badly in Virginia and Colorado, once considered swing states, Trump came to Michigan as part of a last-ditch effort to flip a state or two that has long been won by Democrats.
No Republican has carried Michigan at the presidential level since 1998. Trump is down by an average of seven percentage points — though he falsely told the crowd that polls show he is “even.”
“I’m going to win Michigan, I’m telling you,” he said.
Trump showed up two hours late. Before he arrived, the crowd was treated to all the strangeness of the Trump-rally experience.
A black pastor, Aubrey Shines, called the Democratic Party “evil” and said it had given the country slavery and a black “genocide” by way of abortion. Mark Burns, another black pastor, shouted that liberals are “going nowhere” and shouted praise for what he said is Trump’s love of Jesus. The almost-entirelywhite crowd chanted “all lives matter,” a rebuke to the Black Lives Matter movement. There was booing at the mention of the singer Cher, a Clinton supporter. And most of the crowd remained silent when a campaign leader sought applause for a line about how he descended from Lebanese immigrants.
Trump was introduced by legendary and famously angry college basketball coach Bobby Knight, who referred to him, without apparent irony, as “Saint Donald.”
Trump, however, made numerous false claims in the speech that followed — about his poll numbers, about immigration, about Clinton’s past.
He did have one moment of rare candour. Trump said he would have “behaved a little bit differently” had he known he was going to eventually become a politician.