Clinton warns Trump is ‘threatening’ US democracy

CLEVELAND—Hillary Clinton excoriated rival Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy Friday for not pledging to honor results of the upcoming presidential election, as the bitter rivals battled for supremacy in battleground states.

The 2016 election cycle pitting the Republican nominee against the former secretary of state has turned increasingly toxic, with Trump fueling wild conspiracy theories about vote “rigging” and Clinton warning that the provocative billionaire was straying into authoritarianism.

“We know the difference between leadership and dictatorship, and the peaceful transition of power is one of the things that sets us apart,” Clinton told a rally in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the key swing states up for grabs on November 8.

“Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. By doing that, he’s threatening our democracy.”

Her comments marked a stern rebuke to Trump’s bombshell suggestion during their third and final presidential debate that he may not recognize the election result — a surprising rejection of political norms.

Trump, 70, then told a rally crowd that he could launch a legal challenge if Clinton prevails.

His remarks follow weeks of Trump warning about the likelihood of a “rigged” election including massive voter fraud, despite members of his own party disavowing the comments and Trump earning condemnation from President Barack Obama.

Despite isolated allegations of voter fraud, controversy over the tight 2000 vote and rampant gerrymandering, US elections have been regarded as free and fair.

Invigorated by both her commanding poll numbers and Trump’s eyebrow-raising declarations, the candidate vying to become America’s first female president was in Ohio aiming to block Trump’s efforts to claim the blue-collar heartland state.

Trump, well aware that no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, campaigned in the Buckeye State Thursday.

Meanwhile the Manhattan real estate mogul hosted rallies Friday in the battlegrounds of North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“Eighteen days. You’re going to look back at this election and say this is by far the most important vote you’ve ever cast for anyone at any time,” Trump told a crowd in Fletcher, North Carolina.

‘Win, lose or draw’

“We’re fighting this juggernaut…. because they have billions of dollars they’ve raised,” he said of the Clinton campaign, which reportedly has outspent Trump on television advertising in recent months.

Trump said he would give the campaign everything he had, “right up until the actual vote.”

“Win, lose or draw… I will be happy with myself,” he added. “I don’t want to think back if only I did one more rally I would have won North Carolina by 500 votes instead of losing it by 200 votes, right?”

Clinton is narrowly leading in polling in North Carolina, a state Obama won in 2008 but lost to Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.

Clinton and Trump are coming off an evening of stinging humor at a white-tie charity event in New York where they traded jokes and jabs at what is meant to be a friendly roast — and where Trump was booed.

The bitterness of the campaign was quickly on display, with Trump calling the 68-year-old Clinton “corrupt” and jabbing her for disclosures from her campaign’s hacked emails.

“Here she is in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” he said, as Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York looked on.

Despite the prickly barbs — including Clinton proclaiming that Trump sent “a hearse” to bring her to the dinner — the two candidates shook hands at the end of the evening.

Battleground focus

Trump is trailing badly in the polls, and his debate threat opened him up to a stinging attack from Obama at a Miami rally.

“When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines our democracy,” Obama said Thursday.

“When you suggest rigging or fraud without a shred of evidence, when last night at the debate, Trump becomes the first major party nominee in American history to suggest that he will not concede despite losing… that is not a joking matter.”

In the battle of the battlegrounds, Clinton holds leads in several states, ranging from razor-thin, such as in North Carolina, to moderate in Florida and Pennsylvania and commanding in Virginia.

She is even narrowly ahead in Arizona, the traditionally Republican-leaning state where First Lady Michelle Obama — who galvanized voters with a searing attack on Trump last week — campaigned for Clinton on Thursday.

If Trump loses Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Clinton is all but assured of victory, experts have said.

In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Trump supporters streamed into a convention center to hear Trump speak in their depressed former steel town, where most mill jobs have evaporated.

Trump promised that he would bring many of them back.

“We don’t make things anymore” he told the cheering crowd. “When I’m president, we’re going to start making things again in America.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

‘Nasty’ women swarm in support of Clinton after Trump insult

WASHINGTON—Suddenly, it seems America is crawling with nasty women.

Female unpleasantness as a tongue-in-cheek rallying cry is on T-shirts, in memes and in tweets galore — a furious backlash mocking Donald Trump’s latest insult of Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s dis — “such a nasty woman” — came during one of his interruptions of his Democratic rival in Wednesday’s final presidential debate.

Social media lit up as women came to Clinton’s defense.

T-shirts emblazoned “Nasty Woman” went up for sale on e-commerce website Etsy.

“Nasty Woman” took off on Twitter, with actress Lena Dunham, who has campaigned for Clinton, spreading the word.

“RT if you’re a nasty woman and it’s made your life a freakin’ pleasure,” Dunham tweeted.

Trending were #ImANastyWoman, #ImANastyWomanBecause, #NastyWomenVote and #NastyWomanUnite.

Trump’s comment immediately called to mind for many Janet Jackson’s 1986 “Nasty” video, where the singer champions “nasty boys.”


A new video mashing up Jackson’s hit and Trump and Clinton debate clips quickly went viral.

Spotify streams of Jackson’s song soared 250 percent after Trump’s remark, CNN reported Thursday.

A CNN clip of Trump’s “nasty” remark quickly garnered almost 27,000 views on YouTube.

News site Vox.com said that “calling Hillary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ may have been the best thing Donald Trump has ever done for her campaign.”

It noted the Clinton campaign purchased the web domain nastywomengetshitdone.com, which automatically links to the candidate’s website, www.hillaryclinton.com.

Trump’s comment came in response to a dig from Clinton to the effect that the Republican nominee — who has bragged about his savviness in avoiding paying taxes — might also try to get out of chipping in toward the nation’s pension and health insurance programs.

In their third and final debate before the November 8 election, Trump accused Clinton and her campaign team of drumming up allegations that he has groped almost a dozen women.

“I believe,” Trump said, “she got these people to step forward,” accusing Clinton of running a “very sleazy campaign” and adding of the claims aired by several women dating back decades: “It was all fiction.”

“Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” Clinton said.

“He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton says she takes ‘no satisfaction’ in Trump’s actions

SEATTLE — With Donald Trump on the defensive, Hillary Clinton says she is taking “no satisfaction” in his actions and promising to repair the damage and project a message of unity during the campaign’s final weeks.

Hours after her Republican rival furiously defended himself against multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, Clinton spoke Friday of the need for national healing in a Seattle fundraising speech that also saw her call upon Americans to help her govern if she’s elected president.

“This election is incredibly painful. I take absolutely no satisfaction in what is happening on the other side with my opponent,” Clinton said while visiting a Seattle campaign field office. “I am not at all happy about that because it hurts our country, it hurts our democracy, it sends terrible messages to so many people here at home and around the world.”

The Democratic presidential nominee said earlier at a Seattle fundraiser that while she understands many voters want to “turn away,” her supporters need to help her win the election to “demonstrate the positive, optimistic, confident, unifying vision of America that I believe in and that I think, together, we can demonstrate America’s best days are still ahead of us.”

While President Barack Obama is ending his two terms with high approval ratings, Clinton’s struggles with high unfavorability ratings and questions about her honesty could undermine any electoral mandate she might achieve in November.

So as Trump has dealt with a firestorm that started last week with the release of an 11-year-old videotape of him bragging about kissing and groping women, Clinton is increasingly aiming her message not only at Democrats but at disaffected Republicans and independents turned off by the spectacle.


draiser at the Paramount Theatre, where Trump backers gathered outside on a blustery day, one bearing a sign that read, “Hillary for Prison 2016,” Clinton struck a tone of conciliation. She said she wanted people “to start looking after each other again,” and that while she would aim to pass laws and seek “some real national commitments,” people needed to support each other at the end of an acrimonious campaign season.

“I will be asking for your help. I need your help not just to win this election but to govern and to heal the divides that exist in our country right now,” Clinton said. “I do believe there isn’t anything we can’t do once we make up our minds to do it.”

The former secretary of state said those challenges extend across the globe, saying she had talked to many foreign leaders who complained about Trump’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin or her opponent’s calls for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the country.

“So make no mistake, we do have to repair the damage which he has done, which we will do. But on both domestic and national security grounds, repudiating his candidacy sends exactly the right message,” she said.

Leading in many battleground state polls, Clinton’s team is assessing the possibility of expanding the map to compete in traditional Republican states like Utah, Georgia and Arizona. She is preparing for next week’s final debate in Las Vegas and then an intense stretch of campaigning. While she continues to call Trump unqualified to be president, much of her message appears aimed beyond November — and into a possible first term.
READ: Clinton reaching past Trump, as he denies report of assault

“Bringing people together to solve problems is key to our democracy. There’s no question about it,” Clinton said. “And I want us to do that in a spirit of mutual respect, listening to one another, having each other’s backs.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Hillary Clinton declares ‘moment of reckoning’

PHILADELPHIA—Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, who sacrificed personal ambition for her husband’s political career and then rose to be a globally influential figure, became the first woman to accept a major party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night (Friday morning in Manila), a prize that generations of American women have dreamed about for one of their own.

Declaring that the nation was at “a moment of reckoning,” Mrs. Clinton, 68, urged voters to reject the divisive policy ideas and combative politics of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. She offered herself as a steady and patriotic American who would stand up for citizens of all races and creeds and unite the country to persevere against Islamic terrorists, economic troubles, and the chaos of gun violence.

“Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart, bonds of trust and respect are fraying,” said Mrs. Clinton, who worked on the speech until the early hours of Thursday morning. “And just as with our founders there are no guarantees. It truly is up to us. We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together.”

Mrs. Clinton radiated confidence, from her pungent delivery and easy laugh to the unusually expressive ways she shifted her tone and delighted in her own best lines. She smoothly acknowledged her own limitations and trust issues as a public figure and forcefully challenged Mr. Trump over his claims that he alone could fix America’s problems.

And after 25 years in a sometimes brutal national spotlight, Mrs. Clinton tried to explain who she is and what drives her—from her Methodist faith to her passion for government policy that could mean all the difference for people.

Policy wonk

“I sweat the details of policy,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid—if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president.”

It was one of several contrasts she drew with Mr. Trump, who has barely explained how he would carry out his policy goals. And she received help from several Republicans and military veterans who took the convention stage earlier in the evening to warn that Mr. Trump was not fit for the presidency and would take the United States to “a dark place of discord and fear,” as a retired general, John Allen, put it. Democrats in the convention hall broke out into a booming, lengthy chant of “USA, USA!”

But the most powerful guest speaker of the evening was Khizr Khan, a Muslim American whose son joined the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and was killed during service in Iraq. Mr. Khan, rebuking Mr. Trump for frequently demonizing Muslims as threats to the United States, pulled a copy of the Constitution out of his suit jacket.

“Mr. Trump, have you even read the Constitution?” he said. “You have sacrificed nothing.”

His words seemed to send a collective shiver through the convention hall, leaving some delegates in tears.

Night of history

Few recent political conventions have had a night gusting with so much history and high emotion. If elected, Mrs. Clinton would become the 45th president of the United States, as well as the first to be married to a former president, Bill Clinton, the nation’s 42nd.

She would be the latest in a long line of Yale graduates and accomplished lawyers to lead the country, but she would also be the first mother and grandmother to be commander in chief, decades after women became heads of state elsewhere.

Democrats roared with passion and pride as a beaming Mrs. Clinton took the stage after her daughter, Chelsea, introduced her as an American who was inspired by her own mother’s impoverished childhood and had faced personal and professional choices that defined generations of women. The two locked eyes and fell into a long embrace as Mrs. Clinton patted her back. A moment later, Mrs. Clinton waved at Mr. Clinton, and he blew her a kiss.

Have no fear

Then Mrs. Clinton, who has given only a few major political speeches in her life, delivered her biggest yet. She offered a positive portrait of America that felt like a different country than the nation in decline that Mr. Trump often describes and that many voters’ fear has come to pass after years of terrorism at home and abroad and the growing gap between rich and poor.

“He’s betting that the perils of today’s world will blind us to its unlimited promise,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He wants us to fear the future and fear each other. Well, a great Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than 80 years ago, during a much more perilous time:  ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”

Mrs. Clinton, facing a three-month general election campaign against an unpredictable Mr. Trump, who has risen in the polls since his convention speech last week, hoped that her remarks here would not only energize her party, but also help her connect with undecided and independent voters who are skeptical of her candidacy.

Bernie’s cause

She nodded toward the political work she still had to do. Praising her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, she told his mostly liberal supporters—some of whom booed or staged a “silent protest” in the hall, declining to applaud her speech—“I want you to know, I’ve heard you. Your cause is our cause.”

And she acknowledged that many voters still do not relate to her after her eight years as first lady, eight as a senator, and four as secretary of state.

“The truth is, through all these years of public service, the  ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me,” she added before sharing memories of her humble roots and life lessons from church and her mother—particularly, “no one gets through life alone.”

Bashing Trump

Her strategy was to go hard at Mr. Trump, repeatedly drawing contrasts between her positions—which are in the mainstream of Democratic politics—and Mr. Trump’s unorthodox views for a Republican, such as placing tariffs on other nations’ goods and possibly withdrawing from treaties and trade deals.

Reciting a litany of unusual and unlikely ideas that Mr. Trump laid out at the Republican convention, Mrs. Clinton drew huge laugh when she said, “He spoke for 70-odd minutes—and I do mean odd.”

Mrs. Clinton, the rare first lady who, like her idol Eleanor Roosevelt, used the job to influence policy and who went on to be a powerful figure, began her own quest for the White House nearly a decade ago with her first run for the nomination against Barack Obama.

Back then she presented herself as a steely and even hawkish Democrat who held some views—opposing gay marriage, supporting free trade, and championing the rights of gun owners—that she has shifted since her defeat. This time around, she fashioned herself as “a progressive who likes to get things done”—the sort of line-straddling language that makes some liberals dubious of her values and some independents skeptical about her authenticity.

Wellesley speech

Her convention speech comes 47 years after the young Hillary Rodham wound up in Life magazine when she used her commencement address at Wellesley College to reckon with that era’s civic unrest and clashes between protesters and police officers.

Her message to the millions of people watching her speech on television on Thursday night was similar, as she implored Americans to look past fear and tumult and to choose harmony over hatred. But this time, Mrs. Clinton was to speak to an audience that is deeply distrustful of her. Some 67 percent of all voters and 74 percent of independents said they do not trust Mrs. Clinton, in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

About six weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton started sketching down rough notes about what she wanted to say on the eve she accepts her party’s nomination. A month ago, discussions with her top policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the speechwriters Dan Schwerin and Megan Rooney, began to shape the speech, with advice from a variety of friends and former speechwriters. Mrs. Clinton also sought advice from Mr. Obama’s much-admired former director of speechwriting Jon Favreau.

Falling barriers

The speech often electrified the assembled Democrats with its crowd-pleasing lines about Mr. Trump like, “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.” And the delegates reveled at the end as confetti rained down on Mrs. Clinton and she playfully swatted at the spill of balloons.

For her, though, the greatest exhilaration flowed from the sense that history had been made and that the lives of future generations would be changed forever.

“Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. Happy for boys and men, too—because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.

“So let’s keep going,” she said, “until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves.” TVJ

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net