PHOENIX, Arizona — Fresh off of his historic meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his immigration policy speech here on Wednesday, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump slammed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for running a negative, policy-free, campaign in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News.
Just a few short weeks after the senior most level of Trump’s campaign underwent a major shakeup, the trajectory of the race has shifted with Trump’s poll numbers rising– and Clinton’s slipping.
“I think we’ve had a great few weeks, and yesterday was certainly great,” Trump said when asked if his immigration speech and trip to Mexico represented an inflection point in the campaign. “Yesterday was certainly great with the president of Mexico and the speech in front of 15,000 people. You know there was 15,000 yesterday, you saw that?”
Trump looked presidential and extracted two key concessions from the Mexican president: namely, that there’s a need to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and that the United States has a right to build a wall.
“I have great respect for the President of Mexico,” Trump told Breitbart News. “I thought he was a fantastic person and a fantastic representative for Mexico. And I have great respect [for him]. He’s a very fine person and I enjoyed being with him.”
Trump said that with the polls shifting and the momentum now on his side, Clinton is sliding. She has not held a press conference in over 270 days, and barely ever even holds public events anymore. Trump, who has held many press conferences as a candidate, highlighted this contrast in his interview with Breitbart News.
“I think it’s terrible that she doesn’t do press conferences,” Trump said when asked about how Clinton hasn’t held any in nearly a year. “She’s being coddled by the press. They’re trying to get her through it. I think it’s a shame that she doesn’t do press conferences. I think it’s a shame. It’s a shame for the American people. All she does is she’ll put out a professionally paid-for line about me, her agency will write up a line about me and she’ll put that out. The whole thing is ridiculous. It’s starting to backfire now. Enough about Trump. Everything she says is a negative ad about Trump. I think people don’t want that. They’d like to see positive stuff.”
In particular, Trump noted that the media has refused to press Clinton to explain her “radical” immigration plan, which, according to Pew polling data, is opposed by at least 83% of the American electorate. During his immigration address in Phoenix, Trump challenged the media to begin asking Clinton about her immigration platform.
“The media needs to begin demanding to hear Hillary Clinton’s answer on how her policies will affect Americans and their security,” Trump said in his immigration address here Wednesday night. “These are matters of life-and-death for our country and its people, and we deserve answers from Hillary Clinton… What we do know, despite the total lack of media curiosity, is that Hillary Clinton promises a radical amnesty combined with a radical reduction in immigration enforcement. The result will be millions of more illegal immigrants, thousands of more violent crimes, and total chaos and lawlessness.”
Trump said earlier in his interview with Breitbart News that the reason why Clinton cannot do press conferences is because she is running a policy-free campaign devoid of anything but negative attacks on him.
“Her speech yesterday was terrible,” Trump told Breitbart News. “All she does is hit Trump and it’s not going to work because it’s just not going to work. That’s all she does is attack Trump. She has no policy. She has no energy. She has nothing. She didn’t go to Louisiana– where she should have gone– and they’re very angry at her, and they should be angry at her. But she didn’t go to Louisiana and she didn’t go to Mexico.”
He also noted that Clinton didn’t go to California to see the drought problems there, which Trump did, and noted that “it’s so easy to fix.”
“That is one of the easiest problems in the world to fix,” Trump said. “It’s crazy. But she does not have the energy or the stamina to Make America Great Again.”
Trump explained that Clinton’s substance-free campaign is part of the reason why Democrats are turning to Trump.
“I heard about the Trumpocrats,” Trump said, referring to blue-collar, lifelong Democrats who plan on voting Republican in November in order to help elect Trump president.
“I love that. I love those people… It’s a big deal,” Trump said, noting that the reason they are turning to him is because “Hillary Clinton is the wrong messenger.”
“She can’t get the word out,” Trump said. “All she does is attack me. I just left the veterans at the American Legion and they tell me that she starts attacking me out of nowhere. And they don’t want to hear about that. They want to hear about health care and things. But she starts attacking me, that’s what she wants to talk about. That’s all she’s doing. And now her polls are starting to go down big league and mine are going up.”