Donald Trump responded to Elizabeth Warren’s attack on the Republican candidate at a campaign rally with Hillary Clinton Monday morning in a phone call made to NBC’s Hallie Jackson.
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Clinton’s decision to campaign with Warren in OH, a crucial swing state in the general election, is a clear attempt to stop Trump early in the general election.
“You want to see goofy?”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s short list of potential vice presidential candidates.
With Warren by her side, Clinton said, “I do just love to see how she gets under Donald Trump’s thin skin”. “And you have to watch out for him, because he’ll crush you into the dirt”. “That’s who he is”. “Trump says he will make America great again, but for who?” the progressive spitfire said to thunderous applause.
“Now, I’m here today because I’m with her”.
Clinton even recounted a story of a recent phone conversation between the two that ended when Warren had to go buy her granddaughter “some sparkly shoes”, the type of anecdote not-so-subtly created to suggest the two interact like real-life friends, not simply politicians. Warren asked. “I’ll tell you what kind of a man”. Now, no one knows for sure whether Clinton will pick Warren or if this is simply a strategic move.
Taking the microphone in Ohio, Clinton said she liked Warren’s aggressive approach to her Republican rival, who has sprayed rivals and critics with insults throughout his campaign. “That’s what America needs, and that’s why I’m with her”.
“She exposes him for what he is – temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president of the United States”, Clinton said. “It’s right there. It’s stamped on the front of his goofy hat”.
THE FACTS: The U.S. economy would have to undergo an improbable structural shift for unions to have the numbers and clout to rebuild the middle class.
The pitch is an effort to lure disappointed Sanders supporters to his cause – although a new ABC/Washington Post poll released Sunday showed those voters quickly coming home to the presumptive Democratic nominee. Hand in hand – hands held high – they looked like they could have been on the floor at the convention.
Clinton is trying to court Sanders’s supporters after an at-times bruising primary with the Independent Vermont senator.
Clinton’s decision to campaign with Warren for the first time in Cincinnati, a city on Ohio’s southwestern border with Kentucky and in, was an effort to stop Trump from gaining ground in the state by focusing on how Clinton would help improve the USA economy.
Warren could also help Clinton combat the perception that the multimillionaire former first lady is disconnected from the struggles of working Americans – an image encouraged by Sanders during his campaign.
Clinton, meanwhile, has mostly stuck to more civil rebukes, though she often calls Trump out as “reckless”.
“She has no Native American background except for what her family told her”, Brown said Monday. “At this point, people who won’t vote for two women wouldn’t vote for one”.
At times, their relationship has seemed nearly frosty.
Trump on June 22 devoted an entire speech to criticizing Clinton’s entire career, quoting liberally from an upcoming book by a Secret Service agent who railed against Clinton’s temperament as well as hitting Clinton on her private e-mail server, The Clinton Foundation and Benghazi.
There was little of that distance on Monday. Brown called the Massachusetts Democrat’s claimed Native American heritage “a reverse form of racism”, showing “very serious character flaws”.
Warren has said she believed she had Cherokee ancestors – and denied she invented the heritage to gain a leg up in academia.
Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who lost his Senate race to Warren in 2012, on Monday attacked Warren’s past claim of having Native American heritage.
Clinton’s campaign is hoping that Warren, a revered figure among progressives, will lend important credibility to Clinton’s economic agenda. She also implied that Clinton was short-tempered and impatient with her staff.
“I’m going to appoint a trade prosecutor who will report to the president, so we are going to end the abuse of our market”, Clinton said. The next step: a private interview with Clinton.
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Others being considered include Sen. Tim Kaine and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro of Texas.
