The Clinton Foundation, the family philanthropy of Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, should shut down or transfer operations to another charity despite its good work to avoid perceptions of “pay-for-play”, The Washington Post and USA Today said in editorials on Wednesday.
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National Journal politics editor Josh Kraushaar said Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both so clearly defined at this point that this really seems unlikely to change many people’s minds, no matter how hard Trump pushes it, and no matter how hard the Clinton campaign pushes back.
The AP reviewed Clinton’s State Department schedule and found 85 of the 154 people who held a meeting or a phone call with her donated to the Clinton Foundation either personally or through their businesses or groups.
In a tweet shortly after Clinton wrapped up her speech in the swing state of Nevada, Trump said she “is pandering to the worst instincts in our society. I made policies based on what I thought was right”, Clinton said.
She said it excluded 2,000 meetings she had held with world leaders and US government officials and came to the conclusion that meetings she held with philanthropists like Melinda Gates or Nobel Prize victor Muhammad Yunus was connected to the foundation.
“Voters are used to the old game where failed politicians like Hillary Clinton falsely smear Republicans with charges of racism”.
“Trump’s missteps, stumbles and gaffes seem to outweigh Clinton’s shaky trust status and perceived shady dealings”, said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “I call on Hillary Clinton to disavow this video and her campaign for this sickening act that has no place in our world”. She dubbed the billionaire businessman’s campaign as one that will “make America hate again”.
Trump rejected Clinton’s allegations, defending his hard-line approach to immigration while trying to make the case to minority voters that Democrats have abandoned them.
The ex-president told staffers that he also would step down from the board of the Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc., a global health care project affiliated with the foundation, and it would consider “a range of options to ensure that its vital work will continue”.
She said Friday that candidates can reasonably disagree on how to run the country, “but that’s not the campaign that Donald Trump has been running, and I am reaching out and asking fair-minded Americans to repudiate this kind of divisive demagoguery”.
“You know, I might like the first way better”.
“He has brought it into his campaign”, she said, adding, “He is bringing it to our communities and our country”. The meeting is scheduled for September 19-21, which means it will happen exactly one week before his wife’s first presidential debate in NY.
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Lucey reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
