Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton attacked Donald Trump Thursday in Reno, Nevada, and accused his campaign of promoting racism and bigotry as a result of his support from the alt-right.
“Under the guise of outreach to Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in such insulting and ignorant terms—poverty, rejection, horrible education, no housing, no homes, no ownership, crimes at levels nobody has seen. Right now, he said, you can walk down the street and get shot. Those are his words,” Clinton said.
The former secretary of state went on to say that supporters of Trump who call themselves the “alt-right” are a faction of base who push “white supremacy” and conspiracy theories, such as questioning whether Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, was involved in the Kennedy assassination.
“Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience would be bad enough, but what he’s doing here is more sinister. Trump is re-enforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of president he’d be,” she said.
“A man who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far dark reaches of the internet should never run our government or command our military,” she added.
Clinton also attacked Trump’s association to Breitbart News and the website’s support of alt-right individuals by focusing on Trump’s new campaign CEO hire Stephen Bannon. Clinton went on to read inflammatory headlines from the website.
Additionally Clinton attacked Trump over tweets of his own. “This is someone who retweets white supremacists on line, like the user who goes by the name ‘White Genocide TM.’”
Trump defended himself and his campaign Thursday saying in a speech prior Clinton’s anticipated remarks, that it is “totally predictable” that Hillary calls Republicans “racist.”
“It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook. When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: ‘You’re racist, you’re racist, you’re racist.’ They keep saying it. ‘You’re racist.’ It’s a tired, disgusting argument,” Trump said.
“And it’s so totally predictable. They’re failing so badly. It’s the last refugee of the discredited Democrat politician. They keep going back to the same well, but you know what? The people are becoming very smart. They have heard it too many times before. The well is dry. The well is dry.”