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PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Hillary Clinton assailed Donald Trump for his “shameful,” “disrespectful” suggestion after the terrorist attack in Orlando, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, that President Obama sympathized with terrorists.
“Just one day after the massacre, he went on TV and suggested that President Obama is on the side of the terrorists. Now, just think about that for a second,” Clinton told a crowd in Pittsburg, standing behind a “STRONGER TOGETHER" placard.
“Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States,” Clinton said.
“What Donald Trump is saying is shameful.”
The presumptive GOP nominee made the suggestion in two interviews the morning after 49 were pronounced dead at the hands of an American-born terrorist.
On the TODAY show, Trump said many people believe Obama doesn’t “get” the threat posed by ISIS, then added: “A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it.” In a separate appearance, on Fox News, he floated vague theories about whether Obama has “got something else in mind” when it comes to terrorism: “There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
Although he described reporting on the comments as “dishonest,” he did not deny the implication later on Monday in an interview with the Howie Carr Show. “Well,” he said, “I’ll let people figure that out for themselves.”
On Tuesday, invoking the weight of what “history will remember,” Clinton challenged Republicans to disavow Trump’s statements about the president.
“I have to ask,” she said, "will responsible Republican leaders stand up to their presumptive nominee, or will they stand by his accusation about our president? Now I am sure they’d rather avoid that question altogether. But history will remember what we do in this moment.”
The event here in Pittsburgh, a key piece of the swing state of Pennsylvania, marked Clinton’s second visit to a battleground state since becoming the presumptive nominee.
The speech, tempered by events in Orlando over the weekend, was nevertheless aimed squarely at Trump: She reminded voters that the businessman led the birther movement against Obama (“I guess he had to be reminded Hawaii is part of the United States”), and more recently cast doubt on an Indiana-born federal judge because of his Mexican heritage (“I guess he has to be reminded Indiana is in the United States”).
She dismissed his campaign as full of “conspiracy theories” and “pathological self-congratulations,” and tore through the national security address he delivered on Monday as filled with “bizarre rants” and “outright lies.”
Clinton, whose aides have said she will attempt to fill the role of “unifier” against Trump, concluded her remarks here by reading from the letter that George H.W. Bush left for her husband as he left the presidency on Jan. 20, 1993.
Last week, the letter resurfaced online, shared by hundreds of thousands as a token of the country’s shared values and a bygone spirit of bipartisanship.
“I hadn’t read it in a long time — until yesterday,” Clinton said. “It moved me to tears, just like it did all those years ago.”
“They had just fought a fierce campaign: Bill won, President Bush lost. In a democracy, that’s how it goes. But when Bill walked into that office for the very first time as president, that note was waiting for him.”
She recited the last lines:
You will be our president when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success is now our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.
"That’s the America we love,” Clinton said.
George Bush Presidential Library and Museum
Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/237ReiF
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