Donald Trump flatly labeled Hillary Clinton a “bigot” Wednesday night as he sought to draw African-American voters to his campaign.
“Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future,” Trump said at a campaign rally here, speaking to an overwhelmingly white audience of supporters in deep-red Mississippi. “She doesn’t care what her policies have done to your communities. She has no remorse. She’s going to do nothing for Hispanics and African-Americans.”
The comment marked Trump’s bluntest and most provocative characterization yet of Clinton in his attacks accusing the Democratic nominee of treating minorities, and black people in particular, simply as votes to be counted.
Trump last week accused Clinton of “bigotry” — a term Clinton has occasionally invoked on the trail as well to criticize Trump — but ratcheted up that language Wednesday night. His prepared remarks, which the Trump campaign released ahead of his latest verbal assault, included the “bigot” accusation.
Clinton, speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper soon after Trump made the remark Wednesday night, said her Republican rival “has shown us who he is and we ought to believe him.”
She added, “Someone who’s questioned the citizenship of the first African-American president … is someone who is very much peddling bigotry and prejudice and paranoia.”
Trump has made a direct appeal to African-Americans at each one of his rallies in the last week, decrying inner-city poverty and accusing Democratic policies of failing voters of color, who are a critical voting bloc to the Democratic Party.
The Republican nominee also has taken flak from critics for issuing his appeal to minority voters in towns and cities that are overwhelmingly white.
And he’s been accused of going too far by overplaying poverty statistics and suggesting that virtually all black and Hispanic voters are impoverished inner-city residents.
“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?