Seeking to forever tie Donald Trump to the “alt-right” and its media icons, Hillary Clinton on Thursday delivered a stemwinding indictment of Trump and his embrace of extreme conservative media, rhetoric and conspiracy theories.
The speech, in Reno, Nev., used Trump’s connections to outlets like Breitbart, InfoWars and the National Enquirer to portray him as a dangerous man living in a “paranoid fever dream.”
The Republican nominee was not only exploiting “a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment,” Clinton said, but “stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone” in a way no presidential candidate had ever done before.
“This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel,” Clinton said of Trump’s promotion of various conspiracy theories, including his suggestion that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination and his assertion that President Barack Obama founded ISIS.
“It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there,” she continued. “Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: ‘Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.'”
But Clinton reserved her most damning critique for Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News chief who was recently appointed CEO of Trump’s campaign.
“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the ‘Alt-Right,’ a fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party,” Clinton said. “This is part of a broader story — the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.”
At one point, Clinton simply listed off a number of Breitbart headlines that championed the Confederate flag, criticized women and feminism, and referred to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, the victim of a mass shooting, as a “human shield.”
“He says he wants to ‘make America great again,'” Clinton said of Trump, “but his real message remains ‘Make America hate again.'”
Trump responded to the speech shortly after Clinton was done, saying in two tweets that she was “pandering to the worst instincts in our society,” and that “[s]he should be ashamed of herself!