Trump convened about two dozen Latino supporters, local Republican leaders and campaign staffers Friday at his hotel just off the Vegas Strip. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it and giving it a national megaphone.
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The speech that Hillary Clinton delivered on Thursday was the one that many Democrats had been waiting for.
Clinton is seen as favorable by 34 percent and unfavorable by 45 percent while 20 percent are neutral on her. Trump is seen as favorable by 29 percent and unfavorable by 52 percent while 19 percent are neutral on him.
Clinton started the day by releasing a video that featured Ku Klux Klan members and white supremacists touting Trump’s candidacy – then gave an afternoon speech condemning Trump’s racially inflammatory remarks and support within the “alt-right”, which she described as an “emerging racist ideology”.
“She lies, and she smears, and she paints decent Americans – you – as racists”.
Indeed, during a town hall hosted by Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump suggested that he would “work with” immigrants living in the USA without permission, saying they may be able to pay back taxes as part of a path to legalization. She dubbed the billionaire businessman’s campaign as one that will “make America hate again”. She favourably cited the way three previous Republican nominees, George W. Bush, Bob Dole and John McCain, handled racial matters. “Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones”. Still, about a quarter of Americans, including almost half of Republicans and more than half of Americans who have a favorable view of Donald Trump, think a female president would not be tough enough to handle a military crisis or a terrorist attack.
On Thursday, Trump seemed to back away from his previous calls to establish a force to round up and deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the nation illegally. And he has tried this month to appeal to black voters, with whom he is historically unpopular, by depicting their lives and neighbourhoods as miserable – a tactic Clinton argued was itself a “dog-whistle to his most hateful supporters”. “Winding down some of these programs takes time”. Ted Cruz’s name on her ballot said Clinton was held to a lower standard.
Trump made those comments at a time when he is trying to expand his outreach to African-Americans and Hispanics, who widely disapprove of his rhetoric, his denunciations of undocumented immigrants, and his more outlandish proposals – like a wall along the Mexican border that would be paid for by the Mexican government.
Republican strategist Brad Todd said Trump is in a no-win predicament.
Mrs Abedin replied that the crown prince had also sought the meeting through “normal channels” but that there were uncertainties in Mrs Clinton’s schedules for the days he had requested to meet. Clinton has since apologized for using the term.
At a rally in New Hampshire, Trump said such tricks are from the Democratic playbook.
“When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one exhausted argument”.
Indeed, veterans of GOP campaigns that have tried to appeal to minorities know how hard it is in an era of political polarization where blacks, Hispanics and even Asian-Americans are flocking to the Democratic Party.
Calling it “a exhausted, disgusting argument”, he said it was Clinton who was being a “racist” by viewing minorities merely as a source of votes while doing nothing for them.
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But there’s a larger goal to these ads-and a larger problem that is inspiring the Clinton campaign to run them. People who prefer tough immigration policies, he said, merely want “their jobs protected and their country kept safe”; people who warn of “radical Islam” and the threat of refugees merely want “to uphold our values as a tolerant society”.
