Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump continue to ratchet up racism debate
The two candidates for president continue to ratchet up the racism debate.
A new round of attack ads are taking aim at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s comments about minorities.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to send mixed signals on immigration.
CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett reports that on Friday night in the swing state of Nevada Trump met with Latino supporters in Las Vegas trying to map out strategy in an effort to court Hispanic voters.
The meeting was closed to the press, a rare private move in an otherwise public battle over the minority vote.
Also Friday, Clinton released an attack ad against Trump using his own comments about African-Americans.
“I have a great relationship with the blacks,” Trump says in a clip of a phone interview in addition to one of him speaking at a rally. “What do you have to lose? You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs.”
Trump did the same with Clinton in a post on Instagram.
“They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators,” Clinton says in a clip from the ‘90s.
“It was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term,” Sen. Bernie Sanders says in a clip from a debate during this year’s Democratic primaries.
The ads follow a blistering speech in Reno, Nevada, in which Clinton tied the Republican nominee’s policies to the so-called “alt-right,” an extremist movement of white nationalists.
“These are racist ideas, race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women - all key tenets making up the emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right ... a fringe element that has effectively taken over the Republican Party,” Clinton said.
Clinton said Trump’s new campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, is proof of her argument. He’s the former chairman of Breitbart, a conservative news website Bannon himself described as “the platform for the alt-right.”
Trump is trying to reverse claims of bias.
“She’s totally bigoted, there’s no question,” Trump told CNN. “She has been extremely, extremely bad for African-Americans. I think she’s been extremely bad for Hispanics. Look at the poverty, look at the rise in poverty, look at the rise in violence.”
Trump is now a full 10 percentage points behind Clinton in the latest national poll, with the Democratic nominee above 50 percent support.
This, while Trump tries to clarify his policy on how to handle the 11 million undocumented workers living in the country.
“We’re going to secure the border like it’s never been secured before,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re going to stop the drugs from coming in. We’re going to stop certain people, criminal elements from coming in, and then we shall see what we shall see.”
Underscoring Trump’s dilemma is conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who released a book this week titled “In Trump We Trust.”
In it she observes, “There’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies.”
On Saturday, Trump was expected to speak at the Iowa State Fair, and his campaign said a detailed immigration proposal will be announced within weeks.
Clinton gets her first intelligence briefing Saturday and, separately, still faces questions about donor influence from her time as secretary of state. It was announced on Friday that her meeting schedule from that time won’t be released until just before the inauguration.