PHILADELPHIA – Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump for wanting to “divide us from the rest of the world” in her convention speech Thursday night.
Introduced by daughter Chelsea after a canned video montage narrated by Morgan Freeman, Clinton came out onstage and quickly started yelling. By 10:43 PM she was already shouting out a list of different kinds of people who can fix America – doctors, teachers, etc., while allies Rahm Emanuel and Terry McAuliffe cheered her on from the crowd.
“He wants to divide us from the rest of the world and from each other,” Clinton said of Trump. “He’s taken the Republican Party a long way from morning in America to midnight in America. He wants us to fear the future and to fear each other.”
Clinton said that Franklin Roosevelt had the perfect “rebuke” to Trump with his line “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
“We will not ban a religion,” Clinton said, distorting Trump’s proposed temporary moratorium on migration from countries –most of which are Islamic — with a high concentration of terrorists.
Clinton’s attempt to humanize herself came off awkwardly. She spoke of “hard times that tested us” in her marriage, which she apparently got through by having a 45-year long “conversation” with her philandering husband Bill.
“I’ve even gotten a few words in,” Hillary said, in a relatively cold segment about her marriage.
“Our children are watching and the president we elect is going to be their president too,” Clinton said, using a talking point that echoes one of her commercials, which in turn echoes a Jeb Bush primary commercial, about how children shouldn’t be exposed to Donald Trump.
“I want to thank Bernie Sanders…particularly the young people who threw their hearts and souls into our primary. You put economic and social justice issues front and center where they belong. And to all of your supporters….I’ve heard you. Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy and passion. That is the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America,” Clinton said to her vanquished primary-foe-turned-supporter.
“Now America is once again at a moment of reckoning. Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart…There are no guarantees,” Clinton said. “We have to decide if we will all work together so we can all rise together.”