NEW YORK CITY, New York — In a lengthy speech on Saturday night in Manheim, Pennsylvania, Republican nominee for president Donald J. Trump lambasted his opponent Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton for a secret tape recording of her bashing supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont—and even called for Clinton to be placed in prison and questioned as to whether she has been loyal to her husband former President Bill Clinton.
Trump said in the speech on Saturday night:
A new audio tape that has surfaced just yesterday from another one of Hillary’s high roller fundraisers shows her demeaning and mocking Bernie Sanders and all of his supporters. You know, and I’ll tell you something we have a much bigger movement that Bernie Sanders ever had. We have much bigger crowds than Sanders ever had. And we have a more important movement than Bernie Sanders ever had because we’re going to save our country, okay? We’re going to save our country. But I can tell you Bernie Sanders would have left a great, great legacy had he not made the deal with the devil. He would have really left a great legacy. Now he shows up and 120 people come in to hear him talk. Bernie Sanders would have left a great legacy had he not made the deal, had he held his head high and walked away. Now he’s on the other side perhaps from us and we want to get along with everybody and we will—we’re going to unite the country—but what Bernie Sanders did to his supporters was very, very unfair. And they’re really not his supporters any longer and they’re not going to support Hillary Clinton. I really believe a lot of those people are coming over and largely because of trade, college education, lots of other things—but largely because of trade, they’re coming over to our side—you watch, you watch. Especially after Hillary mocks him and mocks all of those people by attacking him and his supporters as ‘living in their parents’ basements,’ and trapped in dead-end careers. That’s not what they are.
Also in his speech on Saturday night, Trump summed up exactly what came out in the latest Hillary Clinton tapes in which she mocks Sanders supporters:
She describes many of them as ignorant, and [that] they want the United States to be more like Scandinavia but that ‘half the people don’t know what that means’ in a really sarcastic tone because she’s a sarcastic woman. To sum up, and I’ll tell you the other thing—she’s an incompetent woman. She’s an incompetent woman. I’ve seen it. Just take a look at what she touches. It never works out, and you watch: her run for the presidency will never ever work out because we can’t let it work out. To sum up, Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement dwellers. Then, of course, she thinks people who vote for and follow us are deplorable and irredeemable. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. We have the smartest people, we have the sharpest people, we have the most amazing people, and you know in all of the years of this country they say, even the pundits—most of them aren’t worth the ground they’re standing on, some of that ground could be fairly wealthy but ground, but most of these people say they have never seen a phenomenon like is going on. We have crowds like this wherever we go.
WATCH THE FULL SPEECH:
Later in the speech, Trump came back to the tape again and hammered her once more for it.
“Hillary Clinton all but said that most of the country is racist, including the men and women of law enforcement,” Trump said. “She said that the other night. Did anybody like Lester Holt? Did anybody question her when she said that? No, she said it the other night. [If] you’re not a die hard Clinton fan—you’re not a supporter—from Day One, Hillary Clinton thinks you are a defective person. That’s what she’s going around saying.”
In the speech, Trump questioned whether Clinton has the moral authority to lead when she considers the majority of Americans—Trump supporters and Sanders supporters—to be “defective” people. And he went so far as saying that Clinton “should be in prison.” He went on:
How on earth can Hillary Clinton try to lead this country when she has nothing but contempt for the people who live in this country? She’s got contempt. First of all, she’s got so many scandals and she’s been caught cheating so much. One of the worst things I’ve ever witnessed as a citizen of the United States was last week when the FBI director was trying so hard to explain how she away with what she got away with, because she should be in prison. Let me tell you. She should be in prison. She’s being totally protected by the New York Times and the Washington Post and all of the media and CNN—Clinton News Network—which nobody is watching anyway so what difference does it make? Don’t even watch it. But she’s being protected by many of these groups. It’s not like do you think she’s guilty? They’ve actually admitted she’s guilty. And then she lies and lies, 33,000 emails deleted, bleached, acid-washed! And then they take their phones and they hammer the hell out of them. How many people have acid washed or bleached a Tweet? How many?
He returned to the secret Clinton tape a little while later:
Hillary Clinton slanders and attacks anyone who wants to put America First, whether they are Trump Voters or Bernie Voters. What she said about Bernie voters amazing. Like the European Union, she wants to erase our borders and she wants to do it for her donors and she wants people to pour into country without knowing who they are.
Trump later bashed the media as “dishonest as hell” when calling on the reporters at his event to “turn your cameras” to show the crowd that came to see him.
“If they showed the kind of crowds we have—which people can hear, you know it’s interesting: you can hear the crowd when you hear the television but if they showed the crowd it would be better television, but they don’t know much about that. But it would actually be better television,” Trump said.
Trump also questioned whether Hillary Clinton has been loyal to her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has been known to cheat on Hillary Clinton with a variety of mistresses and has been accused of rape and sexual assault by some women.
“Hillary Clinton’s only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself,” Trump said. “I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth. And really, folks, really: Why should she be, right? Why should she be?”
Throughout the speech, Trump weaved together references to his new campaign theme about Clinton—“Follow The Money”—with details about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. He said:
We’re going to take on the corrupt media, the powerful lobbyists and the special interests that have stolen your jobs, your factories, and your future—that’s exactly what’s happened. We’re going to stop Hillary Clinton from continuing to raid the industry from your state for her profit. Hillary Clinton has collected millions of dollars from the same global corporations shipping your jobs and your dreams to other countries. You know it and everybody else knows it. That’s why Clinton, if she ever got the chance, would 100 percent approve Trans Pacific Partnership—a total disastrous trade deal. She called the deal the ‘gold standard.’ The TPP will bring economic devastation to Pennsylvania and our campaign is the only chance to stop that and other bad things that are happening to our country. She lied about the Gold Standard the other night at the debate. She said she didn’t say it—she said it. We want to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership and if we don’t—remember this, if we don’t stop it, billions and billions [of dollars] in jobs and wealth will be vacuumed right out of Pennsylvania and sent to these other countries. Just like NAFTA was a disaster, this will be a disaster. Frankly I don’t think it’ll be as bad as NAFTA. It can’t get any worse than that—signed by Bill Clinton. All of us here in this massive room here tonight can prevent this from happening. Together we can stop TPP and we can end the theft of American jobs and prosperity.
Trump praised Sanders for being strongly opposed to the TPP:
I knew one man—I’m not a big fan—but one man who knew the dangers of the TPP was Bernie Sanders. Crazy Bernie. He was right about one thing, only one thing, and that was trade. He was right about it because he knew we were getting ripped off, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. We’re going to do a lot about it. We’re going to have those highways running the opposite direction. We’re going to have a lot of trade, but it’s going to come into our country. We are going to start benefitting our country because right now it’s one way road to trouble. Our jobs leave us, our money leaves us. With Mexico, we get the drugs—they get the cash—it’s that simple.
Hillary Clinton, Trump noted, is “controlled by global special interests.”
“She’s on the opposite side of Bernie on the trade issue,” Trump said. “She’s totally on the opposite side of Bernie.”
He circled back to trade a bit later in the more-than-hour-long speech, hammering TPP and Clinton cash connections. Trump continued:
Three TPP member countries gave between $6 and $15 million to Clinton. At least four lobbyists who are actively lobbying for TPP passage have raised more than $800,000 for her campaign. I’m just telling you Pennsylvania, we’re going to make it. We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it if we have Pennsylvania for sure. It’ll be easy. But you cannot let this pass. NAFTA passed. It’s been the worst trade deal probably ever passed, not in this country but anywhere in the world. It cleaned out New England. It cleaned out big portions of Pennsylvania. It cleaned out big portions of Ohio and North Carolina and South Carolina—you can’t let it happen.
Trump even called the politicians like Clinton “bloodsuckers” who have let America be drained out of millions upon millions of jobs.
“These bloodsuckers want it to happen,” Trump said. “They’re politicians that are getting taken care of by people that want it to happen. Other countries want it to happen because it’s good for them, but it’s not good for us. So hopefully you’re not going to let it happen. Whatever Hillary’s donors want, they get. They own her. On Nov. 8, we’re going to end Clinton corruption. Hillary Clinton, dishonest person, is an insider fighting for herself and for her friends. I’m an outsider fighting for you. And by the way, just in case you’re not aware, I used to be an insider but I thought this was the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do, believe me.”
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