Hillary Clinton’s campaign tried to defend her controversial top staffer, Huma Abedin, after Donald Trump called Abedin’s husband–the disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner–a “perv” and a “sleazebag.”
Trump also suggested that Abedin, the daughter of Islamic supremacists — is a security risk.
But Hillary’s defense consisted mostly of an effort to change the subject. “Donald Trump has spent the summer saying offensive things about women, but there is no place for patently false, personal attacks towards a staff member,” said Hillary’s press secretary Nick Merrill.
Clinton’s statement also tried to stigmatize public debate about Abedin’s actions. Trump “should be ashamed of himself, and others in his own party should take a moment to stand up to him and draw the line for once. It’s embarrassing to watch frankly,” she said.
Clinton is surrounded by a protective clique and “Huma now is one of the people,” Trump explained during a speech in Massachusetts on Friday.
“Who is Huma married to? One of the great sleazebags of our time, Anthony Weiner, did you know that? She’s married to Anthony Weiner,” Trump said, before pretending to use an imaginary cell phone in mocking Weiner, who preyed on women using his Twitter account.
The late Andrew Breitbart, who founded Breitbart News, played a central role in exposing Weiner’s activities online. In 2011, Mr. Breitbart first revealed that the former New York Congressman was sending women (with whom he was having online relationships) pictures of his private parts over the internet. Weiner defended himself by smearing Breitbart’s journalism and on multiple occasions accused Breitbart of lying. In June 2011, however, Weiner admitted his guilt during a press conference and then resigned from Congress.
But Trump extended his criticism by suggesting that Abedin is a security risk in an office which ignored rules intended to shield top-secret emails from foreign spies. FBI officials are now investigating Hillary’s office to see if her deliberate use of a non-government email system carelessly revealed top secrets to foreign spies.
“So Huma is getting classified secrets,” said Trump. “She’s married to Anthony Weiner, who is a perv… Now these are confidential documents… and guess what happens to Anthony Weiner? A month ago, I see he went to work for a public relations firm. Do you believe it? Now if you think that Huma isn’t telling Anthony, who she is probably desperately in love with in fairness to Anthony, because why else would she marry this guy. Could you believe it?”
Abedin “is married to a bad guy. I’ve known Anthony Weiner for a long time. I knew him before he got caught with the bing bing bing,” he said regarding Weiner’s infamous usage of social media. “He was a bad guy then. It turns out, he was a really bad guy.”