In wide-ranging interviews with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders slammed Donald Trump for suggesting that women be punished for having abortions. The interviews air as part of a special with MSNBC Wednesday night.
“What Donald Trump said today was outrageous and dangerous and you know I’m constantly just taken aback at the kinds of things that he advocates for,” Clinton said.
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Trump made the comments to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews earlier Wednesday, but quickly walked them back in a statement that concluded, “My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.” Still, Clinton said the cleanup did not excuse his comments in the slightest.
“I mean, he would make both women and doctors criminals,” Clinton said. “Even other candidates on the Republican side who run for office haven’t gone as far as Donald Trump has in recent years, and what he said today is just among the most outrageous and dangerous statements that I’ve heard anybody running for President say in a really long time.”
Sanders, for his part, said that to call Trump’s comments “shameful is probably understating that position.”
“I don’t know what world this person lives in,” Sanders told Maddow. “To punish a woman for having an abortion is beyond comprehension. I — I just — you know, one would say what is in Donald Trump’s mind except we’re tired of saying that?”
Both interviews were dominated by Trump, and Sanders and Clinton came together to critique him. They spent much more time pummeling Republicans than each other. And they agreed that their debate has been more substantive and civil and the one on the other side, despite the real differences between the two candidates. Clinton has chosen to largely ignore Sanders, given her massive delegate lead, and Sanders and his campaign have promised to never get personal.
But Clinton had plenty more harsh words for Trump, the man she’s likely to face in November if she wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, and she suggested the media has given the GOP front-runner a pass.
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“Look, I’m not going to — you know, join in the chorus of bashing the press,” Clinton said. “But for a long time, you know, I think the media just was in awe of the ratings spikes, and the amazing number of eyes that were willing to watch Trump do anything. And so he was basically unchallenged.”
President Obama made a similar critique this week at a journalism awards dinner.
Sanders also blamed the media Wednesday for paying too much attention to Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and not enough to his and other Republicans’ policy. The GOP would become a “fringe party” if the media gave Republican policies more scrutiny and focus, Sanders said.
“The Republican Party today now is a joke, maintained by a media which really does not force them to discuss their issues,” Sanders said. “All that I’m saying is that Trump is nobody’s fool. He knows how to manipulate the media and you say an absurd thing and the media is all over it.”
Clinton and Sanders each mainly blamed Republicans for the rise of Trump. “What they’ve done is to create the environment where someone emerges who is truly, in their view, a personality they don’t know what to do with,” Clinton said. “And yet on issues it — they should look in the mirror.”
While Trump often spars with fellow Republicans Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich, Clinton suggested that the three candidates are “much closer in their ideology and their position on issues than their personal animus perhaps suggests.”








