Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton opened a final two-month sprint to the November 8 election on Monday with the Republican presidential nominee suddenly looking stronger as he and his Democratic rival took their bitter fight to Ohio.
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First lady Michelle Obama is set to join the Clinton campaign’s post-Labor Day push with an event in Northern Virginia on September 16, according to a campaign official. Among likely voters in the new survey, he gets 93 percent – just shy of the percentage of support Clinton gets from Democrats.
“I’m going to continue to focus on what we’re doing to create jobs here at home”, Clinton said. For the plane’s maiden flight, Hillary Clinton brought the news media aboard and broke a 275-day stint without a press conference.
Suffering one of her worst coughing bouts of the race, she paused to sip water, her voice reduced to a crackling whisper at times.
“I’m not concerned about the conspiracy theories”.
Previously, Clinton and the reporters had travelled separately. She has not had a formal question-and-answer session with reporters since early December in Iowa.
Clinton expressed “grave” concern about reports that Russian Federation has been interfering in the United States electoral process through invasive cyber attacks on the Democratic Party and an apparent attack on voter registration systems in Arizona.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement criticizing Clinton’s response as “proof that she operates in a permanent ethical blind spot”. Ryan called Pence “a great friend and a true conservative” and said Pence has “added tremendous value” to Trump’s campaign.
“What her real plan is, she has total amnesty” and a pathway to citizenship, he said, reiterating his opposition to such a legalization process without undocumented immigrants leaving the country first. “There may be people you know who are thinking about voting for him”.
Clinton shot back by recalling Trump’s meeting with Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto and their clash over Trump’s plan to have Mexico pay for a border wall. Trump said after maneuvering through a crowd of people who shouted his name, against a backdrop of food stands offering fare ranging from chicken on a stick to Italian sausages, fudge and fresh corn.
He and his running mate Mike Pence also dropped in on the Canfield County Fair in working class eastern OH, where several attendees clapped and chanted Trump’s name.
But Trump’s visit to a largely African-American church congregation in Detroit on Saturday highlighted how much work he still has to do with blacks, Latinos and other minority groups. The candidates have less than three weeks to go before the first of three scheduled presidential debates – expected to be the most watched moments of what so far has been a raucous campaign.
“I am so happy to have all of you with me”, 68-year-old Clinton, who has not held a full-fledged press conference in 275 days, told reporters upon boarding the new plane christened “Hillary Force One”. “But I feel like at this point in history, a candidate like Trump, who is running on reactionary economics, tax breaks for the wealthy and cutting programs for the very poor – who rejects the science of climate change – is running on a core of bigotry”.
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The two candidates crossed paths at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport at the start of the day Monday, illustrating the narrow focus of both campaigns on OH and about seven other battleground states that will decide the election.
