Hillary Clinton’s newest talking point on the campaign trail: Olympic athletes prove Donald Trump is wrong.
Clinton, while campaigning here Tuesday, hit Trump by contrasting his rhetoric with what American athletes are doing during the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this month.
“Have any of you been watching the Olympics?” Clinton asked an audience at a high school in West Philadelphia before saying, “Team USA is showing the world what this country stands for.”
“I was thinking the other day when Donald Trump speaks, he speaks about fear, he speaks about such negative and such pessimism, and then I watch the Olympics and it is exactly the opposite,” Clinton said. “You have young people going out doing their best every day to get prepared to compete and that is what we are going to do in America.”
Clinton, calling herself a “big Olympics fan” added later in the speech that while Trump is always “talking about why we should all be so afraid all the time,” athletes competing in Rio are showing the opposite.
“When you got out and compete, not everyone can win, but you have got to do your best,” Clinton said. “Can you imagine Michael Phelps or Simone Biles or all these other great American athletes in the locker rooms saying, ‘Well I don’t know, I am to afraid to go out and compete.’ No, they get out there, they compete, they do their best, they demonstrate the kind of spirit that we want from all Americans.”
The line has become a new addition to Clinton’s stump speech. Earlier this month, the Democratic nominee suggested that Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, and Biles, a gymnastic phenom, prove Trump wrong.
“If Team USA was as fearful as Trump, Michael Phelps and Simone Biles would be cowering in the locker room,” she said in Warren, Michigan.
The Olympics have provided Democrats and Trump critics with plenty of ammunition to mock the Republican nominee who regularly says the United States “doesn’t win anymore” on trade, immigration and national security.
“Someone said we don’t win anymore. Must not be watching Americans swimming in Rio tonight! #Rio2016,” John Kasich, the Republican Ohio governor who has refused to endorse Trump, tweeted earlier this month.
Jeff Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona, also tweeted a photo of the United State’s gold winning gymnastic team earlier this month with the question, “America doesn’t win anymore?”
