Republican US presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has once again raised former US president Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities, a preview of how the billionaire businessman is likely to respond to general-election attacks from Democratic US presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton and her allies about his treatment of women.
Trump is receiving criticism, too, from within his own party, as some high-profile Republicans have said they would vote for him even though he has all but secured the nomination. Asked about his ability to unify the Republican Party, Trump repeated his view that he does not think it has to be unified and that he would gain Democratic votes to win in the fall.
“I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be — there would be something good about it, but I do not think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense,” Trump said in an interview with ABC’s This Week, which was to air yesterday.
While speaking at a pair of rallies in Washington state on Saturday, Trump repeatedly assailed the woman he has dubbed “Crooked Hillary,” while hardly sparing former Republican rivals Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham, who appear repulsed by his chokehold on their party’s presidential nomination.
“She is married to a man who was the worst abuser of women in the history of politics,” Trump said of Hillary Rodham Clinton as he addressed supporters at the Spokane Convention Center just days after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.
Trump appeared to be responding to news that Priorities USA, the lead super-poltical action committee (PAC) backing Clinton, has already reserved US$91 million in television advertising that is to start next month. Much of the negative advertising against Trump is expected to focus on belittling statements he has made about women in the past.
However, Trump on Saturday said: “Two can play that game.”
“Hillary was an enabler and she treated these women horribly. Just remember this... Some of these women were destroyed, not by him, but by the way that Hillary Clinton treated them after everything went down,” Trump said.
At a later rally, in Lynden, not far from the Canadian border, Trump repeated the former president’s denial of a relationship with a White House intern that would later lead to his impeachment.
“Do you remember the famous: ‘I did not have sex with that woman?’” Trump asked. “And then a couple of months later: ‘I am guilty.’ And she is taking negative ads on me?”
Deriding a culture of political correctness in which Trump said men are “petrified to speak to women anymore,” he also defended himself as a great supporter of women and sought to downplay past comments he has made about women in venues like the Howard Stern radio show in the days before he was a politician. He said some were made in the name of entertainment, while others, like his criticism of actress and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, were warranted.
“Who the hell would not speak badly about Rosie O’Donnell? She is terrible,” Trump said.
Trump also continued a line of attack he rolled out on Friday evening in Oregon and on Twitter aimed at US Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and favorite of the left whom some would like to see as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s running mate.
Trump repeatedly called Warren a “goofus” and suggested that she had lied about her Native American background, an attack reminiscent of his insinuations that US President Barack Obama was not born in the US and demands that he produce a birth certificate.
“She has been going around pretending that she is a minority,” said Trump, who added that Warren had made the claim “because she felt that her mother had high cheek bones.”
“Let us see what she does when they say we want real proof that you are a Native American,” he said.
Warren had insulted Trump earlier on Twitter, calling him “a bully, who has a single play in his playbook.”
Trump also unveiled new lines of attack against Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling her “trigger happy,” saying her foreign policy decisions as US secretary of state had cost the nation millions of US dollars and led to millions of deaths, adding that she wants to “abolish the Second Amendment” and “take your guns away.” Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that the US needs to rein in the notion that “anybody can have a gun, anywhere, any time.”
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A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
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