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Trump Paints Clinton as ‘World-Class Liar’

(CN) - Seeking to reset his presidential campaign after weeks of bad press and self-inflicted wounds, Donald Trump lambasted his Democratic rival Wednesday morning, describing Hillary Clinton as "the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency."

During a nearly hour-long speech at a hotel he owns in New York's Soho neighborhood, Trump stayed on script and on message, delivering his rebuke of Clinton's life and public career in measured but withering tones.

In a series of broadsides launched at the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Trump repeatedly described Clinton as a failed secretary of state with "blood on her hands" who "thinks it's all about her" and is completely out of step with the American people on a wide range of issues.

But his comments included numerous erroneous statements and outright distortions of Clinton's record and many of his bullet points came from the book "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich" by Peter Schweizer, a senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News and is affiliated with the conservative Hoover Institution.

The speech, widely viewed as the beginning of a five-month slugfest to election day, also came at a time when Trump appears strangely vulnerable for the standard-bearer of a major political party.

On Monday, Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, hours before a new Federal Elections Commission report showed that the billionaire real estate developer's campaign had just $1.3 million in the bank at the start of June.

Clinton, meanwhile, reported she had $42 million in the bank at the start of the month.

Trump also made a direct appeal to supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urging them "to join our movement so together we can fix the system for all Americans."

It making his pitch to Sanders people, Trump broadened one of his favorite bromides that the political system is "rigged" and said the rigging extends to the "whole economy."

"It's rigged by big donors who want to keep down wages; it's rigged by big businesses who want to leave our country, fire our workers, and sell their products back into the U.S. with absolutely no consequences for them; it's rigged by bureaucrats who are trapping kids in failing schools; [and] it's rigged against you, the American people," he said.

He also attempted to argue his trade and immigration policies would be more beneficial than Clinton's for blacks and Hispanics, two groups that have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats in recent presidential elections.

But when doing so, he made some of his biggest misstatements regarding Clinton's record.

According to Trump, "Hillary Clinton supported Bill Clinton's disastrous NAFTA, just like she supported China's entrance into the World Trade Organization."

"We've lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed," Trump claimed.

"The she let China steal hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property - a crime which is continuing to this day," he said. "Hillary Clinton gave China millions of our best jobs, and effectively let China completely rebuild itself."

"In return, Hillary Clinton got rich," Trump claimed.

In reality, while Clinton publicly supported her husband's position on NAFTA, subsequent accounts of the Clinton Administration showed she privately expressed skepticism about the deal before it was signed in 1993.

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Since then, she has gone on record calling for parts of NAFTA to be renegotiated.

But as is almost always the case in political rhetoric, Trump's goal was to showcase a fidelity to history, but rather to show worried members of the Republican Party that he will go after Clinton with gusto while not recklessly free-styling as he has in the past.

In fact his remarks, which leaned heavily on things the GOP has said about Clinton for years, could easily have been written by a staffer at RNC headquarters.

High up in the text were sharp critiques of her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, her response to the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and accusations that she and former President Bill Clinton profited heavily and borderline illegally from their years in public service.

"Hillary Clinton's message is old and tired. Her message is that things can't change," Trump said. "My message is that things have to change — and this is our one chance do it. This is our last chance to do it."

Prior to Trump's appearance before an enthusiastic gathering of supporters, the Clinton campaign said it was unconcerned about what he would say, describing his critiques as old news that their candidate has addressed time and again in the past.

As Trump spoke, Clinton was on Capitol Hill, meeting with congressional Democrats. She is scheduled to speak in Raleigh, North Carolina, this afternoon.

Though Trump opened his remarks with broad themes, he quickly dispensed of the kid gloves.

"Everywhere I look, I see the possibilities of what our country could be, but we can't solve any of these problems by relying on the politicians who created them," he said. "We will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place."

He then went on to eviscerate Clinton, calling her a "a world-class liar" whose decisions "spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched."

"No secretary of state has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton," he said. "Among the victims is our late ambassador, Chris Stevens."

J. Christopher Stevens was the U.S. ambassador killed, along with three others, during a 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

"He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed," Trump said. "That's right, when the phone rang at 3 o'clock in the morning, she was sleeping.

"Ambassador Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds of requests for security. Hillary Clinton's State Department refused them all. She started the war that put him in Libya, denied him the security he asked for, then left him there to die," the GOP candidate said.

"In 2009, before Hillary Clinton was sworn in [as secretary of state], it was a different world," Trump continued. "Libya was cooperating. Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence. Syria was under control. Iran was being choked by sanctions. Egypt was governed by a friendly regime that honored its peace treaty with Israel. ISIS wasn't even on the map.

"Fast forward to 2013: In just four years, Secretary Clinton managed to almost single-handedly destabilize the entire Middle East," he continued. "Hillary Clinton's support for violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen — while giving ISIS a launching pad for terrorism against the West.

"She helped force out a friendly regime in Egypt and replace it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has retaken control, but Clinton has opened the Pandora's box of radical Islam," he added.

Trump then turned to the security of the nation's borders and what he claims is Clinton's weakness in the face of a terrorist threats.

"Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth — with no way to screen who they are or what they believe," he said.

"Already, hundreds of recent immigrants and their children have been convicted of terrorist activity inside the U.S.," Trump claimed. "The father of the Orlando shooter was a Taliban supporter from Afghanistan, one of the most repressive anti-gay and anti-women regimes on Earth.

"I only want to admit people who share our values and love our people," he said. "Hillary Clinton wants to bring in people who believe women should be enslaved and gays put to death."

He then added another swipe: "Maybe her motivation lies among the more than 1,000 foreign donations Hillary failed to disclose while at the State Department."

Later, Trump assailed Clinton as someone who has "spent her entire life making money for special interests — and taking money from special interests."

"Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft," Trump said. "She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund — doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.

"Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests — in less than two years — secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public," he claimed.

"Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001. They totally own her, and that will never change."

"America lost its way when it stopped putting the American people first," Trump said. "I think it's all about you."

With that he vowed that if elected president, he would "end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C."

Photo caption:

FILE - In this June 18, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he speaks in Las Vegas. Trump's campaign is cycling $6 million into his companies through use of his properties; meanwhile, Trump has been on an urgent fundraising quest. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

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