Hillary Clinton told voters Wednesday that she can’t believe Donald Trump has the “gall” to run for president demeaning the United States while paying little to no federal income taxes.
Clinton, speaking to a fired up audience in at the Palace of Agriculture in Pueblo, Colorado, also slammed Trump’s campaign for a recent uptick in negativity and telling The Wall Street Journal that they plan to use a “scorched-earth” strategy to try to depress Democrats into not voting.
“His campaign said today that they are going to use a ‘scorched-earth” strategy for the remaining four weeks of this race,” Clinton said. “Now this just shows how desperate they are, that is all they have left, pure negativity, pessimism.”
She added: “We are not going to let Donald Trump get away with it, are we?”
Clinton’s top aides have begun to worry that Trump’s strategy may be effective, though, worrying that they will be able to turn the election into such a revolting slog that Democrats will decide to just sit out the race entirely.
“I think that this seems to be their strategy: Disgust everyone with our, sort of, Democratic dialogue so that they won’t come out to the polls,” John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, said Tuesday, adding that the Trump campaign is trying to steer the race into “the sewer.”
Despite the negativity, Clinton, her campaign aides and outside groups supporting her have grown more confident that they will win Colorado in November, citing polls that find the former secretary of state up double digits in the Centennial State.
Priorities USA, signaling growing confidence in Colorado, has decided to stop airing ads in the final two weeks of the campaign, according to a source with knowledge of the decision. The top-dollar super PAC will continue to air ads in Colorado for two more weeks, but after looking at the polls, advisers decided recently that their money would be spent better elsewhere.
Clinton’s confidence was clear on Wednesday during her first visit to Colorado since early August.
When a man yelled that he loved Clinton, the former first lady laughed and quipped, “I always feel so welcome when I come to Pueblo, I think I’ll come here anytime it gets hard in the White House, what do you say?”
On taxes, Clinton said Trump’s leaked 1990s return to The New York Times shows that the billionaire-turned-Republican nominee “contributed zero, zero for our military, zero for our vets, zero for education and health.
She continued: “And he has the gall to go around disrespecting out military. He calls the United States military a disaster. Well the only disaster is somebody who can get away with playing no taxes and have the gall to run for president and criticize the rest of us.”
Clinton, who is usually relatively stoic when she is protested, even got sarcastic with a protester that threw papers in the air during her event and began shouting.
“Gotta feel a little sorry for them,” she said with a smirk, “they’ve had a bad couple weeks.”