MSNBC host Al Sharpton offered Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton a dose of advice on Wednesday morning: “Toughen up.”
Sharpton, who has yet to endorse Clinton or her opponent Bernie Sanders, suggested the former secretary of state will need to use Donald Trump’s own tactics if she wants to defeat him in the general election.
“You can’t come in with gloves waiting on the referee to fight Donald Trump,” Sharpton said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“You’ve got to fight the kind of fight he’s fighting. [Trump] showed that yesterday,” he added, referring to the billionaire’s press conference Tuesday where he slammed members of the media and called one reporter a “sleaze.”
“She’s either got to toughen up or have tougher surrogates that can resonate with her base,” Sharpton said. “Otherwise she looks like she’s out of touch only because you’re in a ring and the fight’s out in the alley.”
Sharpton compared Trump to a schoolyard “bully” and said, “you deal with a bully by calling a bully’s shot.”
“You don’t try to explain. You’re in a schoolyard in New York and a bully talks about your family. You don’t come back and explain to him, well, let me tell you what parenting class — you come back and call his bluff,” he said. “And you’re lecturing to him about parenting rather than dealing with I’m calling your bluff.”
Sharpton told the New York Times last weekend that Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is heading into a “street fight with a guy with a razor and a broken Coca-Cola bottle” as she approaches the general election against Trump.
