After convention, Hillary roars against Trump
PHILADELPHIA — Fresh off a spirited convention, Hillary Clinton told prospective voters Friday they face a “stark choice” in November and pressed ahead with the scalding rhetoric against her Republican rival that marked many of the speeches in Philadelphia. Another distraction arose, however, as her aides acknowledged that a hacking attack that exposed Democratic Party emails also reached into a computer system used by her own campaign.
In Colorado, Donald Trump denounced Clinton’s convention speech as “full of lies” and said he’s starting to agree with those calling for Clinton to be locked up.
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Not long after, the intrusion into a system used by the Clinton campaign came to light, first reported by Reuters. The FBI said it was working to determine the “accuracy, nature and scope” of the cyberattacks. Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said the newly disclosed breach affected a Democratic National Committee data analytics program used by the campaign and other organizations.
Merrill said outside experts found no evidence that the campaign’s “internal systems have been compromised” but gave no detail on the program or nature of the attacks. President Barack Obama and cybersecurity experts have said Russia was almost certainly responsible for the DNC hack.
The developments followed the leaking of DNC emails earlier in the week that pointed to a proClinton bias by party officials during her primary contest against Bernie Sanders.
Clinton is in the midst of a post-convention campaign bus tour through the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
She told supporters in a West Philadelphia arena the coming election is the most important one in her lifetime.
“It’s not so much that I’m on the ticket; it’s because of the stark choice that’s posed to Americans in this election,” she said.
In Colorado Springs, Trump at times seemed to brush off the fierce convention-week Democratic criticism, which went so far as to question his sanity. Sounding more like a pundit than the subject of all the vitriol, he pronounced her speech “so average” and “full of cliches.” But he grew harsher as his event went on.
“Remember this,” he said, “Trump is going to be no more Mr. Nice Guy.” And for the first time he encouraged his crowd’s anti-Clinton chants of “lock her up.”
“I’ve been saying let’s just beat her on Nov. 8,” he said, “but you know what? I’m starting to agree with you.”
Polls find that most Americans question Clinton’s honesty. But in her convention speech and her first events afterward, her priority was to go after Trump, not ask for trust.
Joined on the bus tour by her husband, Bill Clinton, running mate Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, Clinton stopped at a toy and plastics manufacturer in Hatfield, Pa., where she and Kaine cast Trump as a con artist.
“We don’t resent success in America but we do resent people who take advantage of others in order to line their own pockets,” said Clinton, addressing local officials and employees on the factory floor.