Trump tries to preempt Hillary's 'Smack-down'

'SHAME ON YOU!' Donald Trump boomed a pre-buttal of Hillary Clinton's 'racism' speech on Thursday in Manchester, New Hampshire, saying that her name-calling is 'the last refuge of the discredited Democrat politician'

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'PREJUDICE AND PARANOIA': Hillary Clinton sought to paint Trump and his supporters as racists, and Trump tried to preempt her

Donald Trump tried to pre-empt Hillary Clinton's Thursday afternoon speech with one of his own, undercutting her efforts to paint him as a racist with claims that such criticism is 'the last refuge of the discredited Democrat politician.'
'Shame on you,' he boomed, while TV networks prepared to switch over to Clinton for her long-awaiting smackdown of the Republican presidential nominee.

Clinton, he told a hotel ballroom full of New Hampshire voters, would 'accuse decent Americans who support this campaign – your campaign – of being racists. Which we're not.'
'When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: "You're racist. You're racist. You're racist." They keep saying it: "You're racist",' Trump exclaimed, in an unusual pre-buttal less than an hour before Clinton spoke a continent away in Nevada.

The billionaire populist pointedly asked black and Hispanic voters for their support, suggesting that many hope to see 'for the first time – maybe ever – a better future, and a future that begins with jobs, jobs and more jobs. And also education, education, education.'

'We will promote the values of tolerance, justice and acceptance,' he pledged as he wrapped up.

'We will steadfastly reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms.'

The Clinton campaign tried its own preemption strategy, sending reporters a few excerpts from her speech while Trump was talking.

'From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,' the prepared text read in part. 'He's taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America's two major political parties.'

'If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?' the campaign said she would ask.

Clinton planned to focus her ammunition on the Trump campaign's loose tie-ins with the so-called 'Alt-right,' a sparsely populated and difficult to define fringe movement based on white nationalism and the view that 'immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.'

'A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party,' Clinton said, according to the speech excerpts.
That's a reference to Trump's newly minted campaign CEO Steve Bannon, formerly the executive chairman of Breitbart News – an outlet revered by the Alt-right.

Trump painted Clinton's attempt to tar him with the brush of bigotry as a time-worn tactic that has lost its potency over the decades.
'They keep going back to the same well, but you know what? The people are becoming too smart,' he said. 'They've heard it too many times before. The well is dry. The well is dry.
'This is the year the people who believe in much more honest politics, say the word "Enough".'


Tweety Bird
He tweeted after Clinton's speech that she had been 'pandering to the worst instincts in our society. She should be ashamed of herself!'

And in a followup message on Twitter, he said her 32-minute speech was '[v]ery short and lies. She is the only one fear-mongering.'

It has been amusing to watch the worst slander-monger in the history of US politics try to assume an innocent stance. Donald Trump regularly incites political violence, is a serial liar, racist, xenophobe and misogynist who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
His policies appear to change direction with the political wind. Just saying.