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In her first campaign stop with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren at her side in Cincinnati on Monday, Democrat Hillary Clinton took aim at Republican Donald Trump and made a strong play for supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
With less than a month to go before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, Clinton took on Wall Street and laid out some economic plans aimed at winning over Sanders voters.
Warren and Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, spoke to a crowd of 2,000 in the rotunda of The Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. A few hundred other fans gathered outside after the room reached capacity.
VP speculation
Warren, who is reportedly being vetted by Clinton as a potential running mate, praised Clinton’s strength.
“She’s been on the receiving end of one right wing attack after another for 25 years, but she has ever backed down,” Warren said.
Clinton praised Warren for leading the fight to relieve high student debt burden and pushing for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as strong rules for financial institutions in the wake of the Great Recession - all themes Sanders sounded during his campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton said she would protect and strengthen the laws governing Wall Street to “make sure that Wall street never wrecks Main Street again.”
When companies break the rules their fines should reduce executive bonuses and “when laws are broken, individuals, not just corporations, should be held accountable,” Clinton said.
Trump to be in Ohio today
Trump’s campaign put out a news release calling Warren “a turncoat for the causes she supposedly supports” by backing Clinton, who Trump’s news release said has accepted campaign contributions “from Wall Street interests” and supported trade deals in the past.
Trump, a billionaire businessman and the presumptive Republican nominee, called Warren’s appearance a “sad attempt at pandering to the Sanders’ wing.”
Those comments were echoed in an Ohio Republican Party statement released after the speech.
“Hillary Clinton is only campaigning with Sen. Elizabeth Warren to pander to Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Clinton as their nominee,” said ORP Chairman Matt Borges. “A Clinton-Warren ticket reeks of complete insincerity. I laughed out loud when Elizabeth Warren said she is supporting Hillary Clinton because ‘she has a good heart.’ Hillary Clinton stands for everything that Elizabeth Warren claims to be against.”
Trump will campaign in St. Clairsville in Belmont County today, near the West Virginia border.
Going after Sanders’ supporters
Sanders, an independent from Vermont, was Clinton’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination. He has said he will vote for her in November but he has not conceded the race even though she has enough delegates to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in July.
The speeches on Monday were heavily weighted toward matters of the economy. Warren and Clinton said Republicans generally, and Trump specifically, support giving the wealthy all the breaks and leave the regular people behind. Warren said Americans are worried and angry about stagnant incomes, crumbling infrastructure, pensions that are in trouble and other problems.
“Washington won’t lift a finger to help,” Warren said.
Clinton pledged to “break the gridlock” in Washington to get things done.
“We are fighting for a better future,” said Clinton. “I got into this race because I want to better the odds for people that have the odds stacked against them.”
In order to build an economy that benefits more than just the people at the top “we’ve got to go big and we’ve got to go bold,” said Clinton.
Clinton said she would better police trade deals and appoint a trade prosecutor who would report to the president. She also supports an exit tax on companies leaving the U.S. and wants to invest the country’s resources in rebuilding infrastructure, which she said would create jobs.
“I will not raise taxes on the middle class, but we are going to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy,” Clinton said.
Clinton and Warren both expressed strong support for unions.
“Unions built America’s middle class and unions will rebuild America’s middle class,” Warren said.
Both women said Trump would be bad for the country. Warren said he cheered when the United Kingdom voted to exit the European Union, even though the financial fallout from that vote cost American’s billions of dollars in losses in their retirement funds.
“Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office the next time America faces a crisis,” Clinton said to the crowd’s groaning response of, “No.”
She cited a risk analyst’s warning earlier this year that a Trump presidency would be one of the top threats facing the economy and warned that if Trump is elected president he would bankrupt America just as he took his casinos into multiple bankruptcies.
“We need to write a new chapter in the American dream, and it can’t be Chapter 11,” Clinton said, referring to a chapter of bankruptcy law. “Donald Trump is wrong for America. Our best days are ahead of us.”
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