Donald Trump tried to put one of the toughest weeks in his campaign behind him Monday by using a cybersecurity speech to veterans to hammer away at Hillary Clinton’s email controversy.
Trump hewed closely to his script Monday morning, promising as he read from a Teleprompter that he would order a complete review of the US cybersecurity capabilities and prepare offensives against global opponents.
And, just a few minutes into his talk before the Retired American Warriors PAC, he shifted to a sharply honed attack on Clinton.
“Has anybody put a server in their basement? Oh boy. Hillary Clinton’s only experience in cybersecurity involves a criminal scheme to violate federal law, engineering a massive coverup and putting the nation in harm’s way,” Trump said.
Trump then hit Clinton on questions of whether she knowingly sent classified information through her private email server: “The fact that a former senator and secretary of state claimed not to know what the letter ‘C’ means is just one more example of why she is totally unfit to hold the office of the president.”
The “C” label is a reference to the demarcation of an email as “confidential,” and came up during the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.
The hard-hitting attack on Clinton comes one week after the first debate, where his supporters said they were disappointed that he didn’t hit Clinton on her emails. It also follows a disastrous seven-day stretch dominated by an underwhelming debate performance, a feud with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, early morning Tweet storms and insinuations — without evidence — that Clinton cheated on her husband. The rocky stretch was capped with a report late Saturday in The New York Times that found Trump may have avoided paying federal taxes for 18 years.
