In Raleigh, Clinton replays her greatest hits from the debate
RALEIGH -- Hillary Clinton ripped Donald Trump on Tuesday in Raleigh for showing up unprepared for the first presidential debate and, reliving several key moments from Monday night, questioned the Republican nominee’s commitment to American families and his responsibility to pay his taxes.
“I’m going to leave it to the fact-checkers to go through all of Donald Trump’s claims,” she said at a campaign rally Wake Technical Community College, her first since the debate. “There was a lot of work for the fact-checkers last night.”
Clinton said that one of Trump’s statements in the debate that “caught [her] attention” was his saying that paying no federal income tax “makes [him] smart.” Clinton called it “gaming the system.”
“I think there’s a strong probability he hasn’t paid federal taxes a lot of years,” she said, “and this is a man who goes around calling our military a disaster, who goes around criticizing every institution from healthcare to education, our vets. He probably has’t paid a penny to support our troops or our vets or our schools.”
She highlighted her own history of releasing her and her husband’s tax returns. Trump has yet to make his tax returns public, citing an ongoing audit, but Clinton has also suggested that Trump does not want to release his tax returns because he isn’t as wealthy as he claims. In a short aside during her remarks, Clinton praised her debate guest Mark Cuban for sharing his business’ profits with employees. She said Cuban is “a real billionaire, by the way.”
“Bill and I have released all of our tax returns, going back 40 years,” Clinton said. “And if you look, you’ll see that we pay the highest marginal rate. We try to give 10 percent to charity, because we believe in this country.”
Clinton also recalled the moment at the debate when Trump said it was “called business” to cash in on the housing market collapse.
“I don’t think I’d make a big bragging point out of that,” Clinton told the crowd. “He basically said yeah, if the housing market crashes I can go in and buy stuff and make some more money. I’ve got to tell you, what kind of person believes that? What kind of person would want to root for 9 million families losing their homes?
She added: “One who should never be President.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Clinton hit Trump for saying in a TV interview that there was a problem with his microphone during the debate.
“It was on and off and it was much lower than hers,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends.” “I don’t want to believe in conspiracy theories of course, but it was much lower than hers and it was crackling.”
Clinton’s response? “Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night,” she said.
Clinton also said that she is looking forward to debating Trump again in St. Louis, and again in Las Vegas, in a few weeks.
“One down, two to go,” she told the crowd in Raleigh.