MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Chelsea Clinton railed against the tenor of the Republican presidential primary Thursday as it has taken a turn for the personal as the wives of Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are caught in political cross hairs.
“I think that the level of vitriol goes beyond anything that we certainly have seen in contemporary times in this election,” she told reporters Thursday.
Clinton, the daughter of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, avoided answering what a potential Trump-Clinton matchup would look like.
She did, however, highlight what she says is a strength for her mother’s candidacy, telling supporters that the attacks in Brussels prove the importance of electing “somebody who’s ready to be commander in chief and our chief diplomat from day one in the office and who understands that part of that job is not demonizing Muslim Americans.”
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“I think the normalization of hate speech, the racism, the sexism, Islamophobia, the anti-immigrant rhetoric, the homophobia, the rhetoric against worker’s rights, against Americans with disabilities. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on,” Clinton continued. “And then the policy proposals that flow from that, to build a wall around our country, to kick out American Muslims or to police their neighborhoods, to restrict their movements. I mean, this is not our country, these are not our values.”
Chelsea Clinton also did not refrain from drawing sharp contrasts between her mother and Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders, calling his plan to make public universities tuition-free “unlikely.”
“My mom is not only the only candidate on either side of the aisle who tells you exactly how she’s gonna pay for everything, but she doesn’t expect to rely on things that are unlikely,” Chelsea Clinton said after claiming that Sanders’ plan for free tuition for every student public colleges won’t be able to be fully funded by a tax on Wall Street speculation. She insisted that the states are going to have to make up the rest of the cost.
She continued: “If you listen to my mom’s opponent, he mainly talks about the Supreme Court through the lens of campaign finance reform and the need to overturn Citizens United.
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“I always find it hard when anyone says they care more about overturning Citizens United than my mom does, because for my mom it’s both ethical and personal. Citizens United was an organization set up with one purpose, literally, just one purpose, to destroy her 2008 presidential campaign,” she said. “We don’t live in a single-issue country, and we can’t afford to have a president who treats the Supreme Court or any part of the job of being president as having a single-issue mandate,” she added, echoing her mother’s talking points. Bernie Sanders’ campaign strongly refutes the claim that the senator sees the Supreme Court vacancy though the eyes of one issue. “Sen. Sanders has been outspoken on a host of issues before the Supreme Court ranging from the rights of women to control their own bodies to a decision gutting the Voting Rights Act to rulings on the EPA’s ability to combat climate change,” said Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs. “It is true that Sen. Sanders regards the disastrous decision in Citizens United to be one of the worst rulings ever by the court because it has created a corrupt campaign finance that lets Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, Big Oil and other powerful special interests buy elections and rig the economy in their favor.” This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
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