Hillary Clinton says she won’t match Donald Trump’s nickname for her by issuing a similar label for him.
But Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, says that Trump’s penchant for nasty name-calling is something most people have matured beyond at “about fifth grade.”
The Democratic ticket members’ comments came in their first joint interview, set to air Sunday night on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
In the interview, Clinton was asked what she calls Trump, in response to his moniker for her: “Crooked Hillary.”
“I don’t call him anything. And I’m not going to engage in that kind of insult fest that he seems to thrive on,” Clinton said, according to early excerpts made available by CBS.
“So whatever he says about me, he’s perfectly free to use up his own air time and his own space to do. I’m going to talk about what he’s done, how he has hurt people in business time after time after time,” she said.
Kaine, the Virginia senator and former governor who held his first joint rally with Clinton on Saturday in Miami, credited Clinton with letting “water go off her back on this.”
“That’s not the way I feel. When I see this, you know, ‘Crooked Hillary,’ or I see the, ‘Lock her up,’ it’s just ridiculous. It is ridiculous,” he said, referring to chants that broke out repeatedly at last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Kaine added: “It is beneath the character of the kind of dialogue we should have, because we’ve got real serious problems to solve. And look, most of us stopped the name-calling thing about fifth grade.”
The full interview is slated to air Sunday night.