Hillary Clinton is "very disappointed" in Donald Trump, GOP on immigration
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is "very disappointed" with Donald Trump for his inflammatory depiction of Mexican immigrants, she said Tuesday in an interview with CNN. She's also disappointed with the rest of the 2016 GOP field "for not responding immediately and saying, 'Enough, stop it,'" she said.
The Republicans in the race, she said, are "on a spectrum of hostility" on the issue of immigration. At best, she said some GOP candidates show a "grudging acceptance" of immigrants. She castigated all the candidates for opposing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. "I am 100 percent behind comprehensive immigration reform," she said.
However, Clinton isn't giving the GOP enough credit for its diversity of opinion. At least one presidential candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham, supports the idea.
"If I were president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did not have a pathway to citizenship," he recently told USA Today. "You would have a long, hard path to citizenship ... but I want to create that path because I don't like the idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help. That's not who we are."
Clinton spoke to CNN from Iowa where earlier in the day she attended an organizing event in Iowa City and a house party in Ottumwa. At the organizing event, Clinton gave a wide-ranging speech, touching on everything from health policy and education to military engagements.
Speaking to a group of reporters after the events, Clinton addressed the fact that her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has been drawing huge crowds in Iowa and elsewhere. "Look, you know, this is going to be competitive -- it should be competitive," she said.
In the CNN interview, Clinton also shared her thoughts on the Treasury Department's plans to put a woman on the redesigned $10 bill. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that the nation's first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton will remain on some of the $10 bills, but Clinton said she doesn't like the idea of a woman sharing the currency note with Hamilton.
"That sounds pretty second class to me," she said. She added that "it might be more appropriate" to remove former President Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill than Hamilton from the $10 bill.
