US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump, sensing the urgency of a presidential campaign entering its home stretch, on Tuesday assailed one another on multiple fronts and in coarse terms, as new data showed the candidates in a dead heat.
It was another day of scathing rebukes, intense rhetoric and tit-for-tat accusations as the rivals sought to claim the advantage with voters just nine weeks before the Nov. 8 election.
In Florida, Clinton branded Trump a “demagogue” and declared his campaign to be “one long insult.”
Photo: Tampa Bay Times via AP
After the brash billionaire made a sudden trip to Mexico last week to meet Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Clinton said Trump choked because he failed to discuss his demand that Mexico pay for Trump’s border wall.
“Let me just tell you about choking,” Trump fumed to ABC. “I don’t choke. She chokes.”
Trump has edged ahead of Clinton in a new CNN/ORC poll, at 45 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, while an NBC News poll of registered voters shows Clinton’s lead holding at 6 percentage points — 48 percent to 42 percent.
Another survey, by the Washington Post, looking at all 50 states shows Clinton with a solid lead in terms of electoral college votes and even strength in some traditional Republican strongholds.
Clinton said she pays no attention to polls.
“We’re sticking with our strategy, we feel very good about where we are,” she said.
However, the polls show how close the race is looking ahead of the vote, making the battle for the so-called swing states all the more critical.
Clinton rallied supporters at a voter registration event in swing state Florida, while Trump held a town hall meeting with military veterans before heading to North Carolina for an evening campaign rally.
“We have 62 days — just 62 days — to make the case, and I can’t do it without you,” Clinton said in Tampa.
The candidates have less than three weeks before the first of three scheduled presidential debates — expected to be the most watched moments of an already raucous campaign.
Clinton, in the national eye for three decades, shrugged off the intense nature of Republican attacks against her, including a call for a fresh congressional investigation of the Clinton Foundation following reports that donors gained inappropriate access to her while she was secretary of state.
“I believe I’m the best person for this job and I believe they’re going to keep coming after me,” Clinton told reporters.
While Clinton repeated her charge that Trump is “temperamentally unfit” for office, Trump assured veterans in Virginia Beach that he was in their corner, and used the opportunity to slam Clinton’s ineffectiveness as a top diplomat and politician.
“She’s a disaster in so many different ways, folks,” he said.
“You have illegal immigrants that she wants ... treated better than veterans,” he said.
Clinton is promoting a pathway to citizenship for many of the 11 million people living in the shadows, while Trump wants to curtail immigration and require that those who wish to gain legalized status must leave the country first.
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