Hillary Clinton used the backdrop of Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Wednesday to slam Donald Trump and one of his most high-profile surrogates, the state’s governor, Chris Christie.
“If your governor will start doing his job instead of following Donald Trump around, holding his coat, maybe we could really get New Jersey’s economy moving again,” Clinton said to cheers from the crowd.
Clinton is spending time in the city where Trump developed casinos in an effort to highlight what her aides are calling Trump’s “fraudulent business history.”
The visit comes the same day that the campaign announced that she is updating her college affordability plan to include input she received from her primary rival Bernie Sanders. In an olive branch to unify her party in fighting Trump, Clinton will add three new features to her “New College Compact,” including eliminating college tuition for working families, a step that moves Clinton closer to the tuition free college plan that Sanders ran on in 2015 and 2016.
She hit Trump for “multiple bankruptcies, stiffing contractors and spurring hundreds of job losses” during his time owning casinos in Atlantic City.
Clinton appeared in front of Boardwalk Hall, the city’s old convention center, and was introduced by a small business owner who the aide said was hurt by Trump’s business practices.
Clinton and her aides are looking to move past an FBI press conference that recommended she not face charges in her exclusive use of a private email server, but also raised serious questions about her judgment. The presser by FBI director James Comey rocked Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters, making it even more important in the eyes of Clinton’s top aides to undercut Trump’s credibility.
Trump wasn’t letting the spotlight disappear off the FBI press conference Wednesday morning.
“Crooked Hillary Clinton lied to the FBI and to the people of our country. She is sooooo guilty. But watch, her time will come!” the real estate mogul tweeted.
He also sent a pair of tweets criticizing Clinton and blaming Democrats for making “all the wrong moves” to destroy the city.
“I made a lot of money in Atlantic City and left 7 years ago, great timing (as all know). Pols made big mistakes, now many bankruptcies,” Trump tweeted.
Clinton, since pivoting to Trump, has attempted to undercut that business record, something that has animated much of his unexpectedly strong presidential run.
“How can anybody lose money running a casino? Really,” Clinton jokingly asked an audience in Detroit last month.
She added, “Trump economics is a recipe for lower wages, fewer jobs, more debt. He could bankrupt America like he’s bankrupted his companies.”
Trump has filed four business bankruptcies in the last 30 years, all of which surrounded his casino holdings in Atlantic City.
Trump filed for bankruptcy on the Taj Mahal in 1991 and the Trump Castle Associates in 1992. He later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Trump Hotel & Casino Resorts in 2004 and Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2009.
Trump has defended the bankruptcies by noting that he never personally went bankrupt.
“I have used the laws of this country … the (bankruptcy) chapter laws, to do a great job for my company, for myself, for my employees, for my family,” he said last year.
But the bankruptcies have hurt Atlantic City, a city that is now blighted with empty hulking buildings, unemployment substantially higher than the national average, and a high violent crime rate.
The Clinton campaign blamed Trump for the problems plaguing the city.
In addition to Wednesday’s event, the Clinton campaign released a video that documents “Trump’s fraudulent pattern in Atlantic City of making millions for himself while defrauding people of millions that he owed them.”
The video, while not featuring Trump’s voice once, uses people stiffed by Trump in Atlantic City to make the case that the city “proves” he shouldn’t be president.