Clinton seizes on Trump University to frame Trump as a "fraud"
NEWARK, N.J. -- Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump as a "fraud" who is trying to "scam America" at a campaign event in Newark on Wednesday.
"His own employees testified that Trump U,'" Clinton said, referring to Trump'snow-defunct Trump University, "that 'Trump U' was a fraudulent scheme where Donald Trump enriched himself at the expense of hard-working people. Trump and his employees took advantage of vulnerable Americans, encouraging them to max out their credit cards, empty their retirement savings, destroy their financial futures, all while making promises they knew were false from the beginning."
New York's Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman, is suing Trump and accusing him of defrauding thousands of students. Nearly 400 pages of court documents, unsealed Tuesday, revealed the ways in which Trump University's employees worked to convince potential customers to buy expensive seminars.
"This is just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud," Clinton said. "He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at 'Trump U.' It's important that we recognize what he has done because that's usually a pretty good indicator of what he will do."
Clinton's comments come after her campaign spent the morning lobbing attacks at Trump over the charges presented in the lawsuit and related documents. After sending reporters articles published in the New York Times, Washington Post and by Reuters about Trump University, her aides sent a series of scathing tweets from Clinton's account that called the program a "fraud" that "intentionally put people at risk."
"Trump U is devastating because it's [a] metaphor for his whole campaign: promising hardworking Americans way to get ahead, but all based on lies," wrote Clinton's press secretary, Brian Fallon, in a tweet.
Last week, as she campaigned in California, Clinton used Trump's past comments about the housing market to cast him in a similar light: as a selfish businessman who cares about himself more than he cares about others.
"He roots for himself, not for you," she said at an event in San Jose. "He wants a good result for himself. He doesn't care who gets hurt in the process."
Clinton said that day that Trump is "not the kind of person" who should be president, and on Wednesday in Newark, repeatedly said that the presumptive Republican nominee is not qualified to be president.
"On issue after issue," she said, "we see someone who is unqualified and unfit to be President of the United States."