Donald Trump slammed Hillary Clinton following her recent criticism about his failed businesses in a lengthy speech in NYC on Wednesday, June 22.
“Hillary Clinton, who, as most people know, is a world-class liar,” the GOP presidential nominee, 70, said at Trump SoHo. “Yesterday, she even tried to attack me and my many businesses. But here is the bottom line: I started off in Brooklyn, New York, not so long ago, with a small loan, and built a business worth over 10 billion dollars. I have always had a talent for building businesses and, importantly, creating jobs. That is a talent our country desperately needs.” (According to The New York Times, Trump received the loan, reportedly worth $1 million, from his father, Fred Trump.)
“The other candidate in this race has spent her entire life making money for special interests — and taking money from special interests,” he claimed. “Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft. She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund — doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.”
Clinton, 68, blasted Trump’s business records at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday. “He’s written a lot of books about business. They all seem to end at Chapter 11,” she said, referring to his past bankruptcy filings. “The full faith and credit of the United States is not something you just gamble away. That could cause an economic catastrophe.”
Clinton’s comments came just weeks after she clinched the Democratic presidential nomination on June 7. During her victory speech, she took a jab at Trump’s campaign slogan.
“When he says, ‘Let’s make American great again,’ that’s code for ‘let’s take America backwards,'” she said in Brooklyn at the time, “back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all.”
Trump returned the favor on Tuesday, mocking Clinton’s slogan and Twitter hashtag #ImWithHer. “Hillary Clinton wants to be president. But she doesn’t have the temperament, or, as Bernie Sanders said, the judgment, to be president. She believes she is entitled to the office. Her campaign slogan is ‘I’m with her.’ You know what my response to that is? I’m with you, the American people. She thinks it’s all about her,” he said.
“I know it’s all about you [Clinton],” he added. “I know it’s all about making America great again for all Americans.”
As in previous speeches, Trump also discussed Clinton’s private email server that she used when she was secretary of state. “Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments — perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China — putting all of America in danger. Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted,” he told the crowd. “While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency.”
Additionally, Trump claimed that Clinton was responsible for making Iran the “dominant power in the Middle East and on the road to nuclear weapons.” According to The New York Times, Tehran has given up 98 percent of its nuclear fuel this year.
Trump’s speech wasn’t all about Clinton, though. At one point, he stated that the U.S. is the highest-taxed country in the world, which is false. According to CNN, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that Belgium is the highest-taxed country.
Read Trump’s full speech here.
