Top advocates for presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump set the table for the final stretch of the campaign Thursday with dueling, scathing messages that cut to the core of each nominee’s weaknesses.
In New Hampshire, First Lady Michelle Obama delivered an unusually personal and political denunciation of Trump for recent revelations about his treatment of women, adopting an attack role usually left to Clinton’s other advocates. Obama invoked her observance of the International Day of the Girl on Tuesday and global education initiative “Let Girls Learn” to pivot to broadsides against the Republican candidate.
“I have to tell you I listen to all this, and I feel it so personally. And I’m sure that many of you do, too, particularly the women: the shameful comments about our bodies, the disrespect of our ambitions and intellect, the belief that you can do anything you want to a woman? It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts,” Obama said.
But she also brought up young and adult men: how Trump’s behavior and the accusations against him would affect them, and dismissing claims that the nominee’s rhetoric amounted to standard male locker room banter.
“How is this affecting men and boys in this country? Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this, and I know that my family is not unusual. And to dismiss this as everyday locker room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere. The men that you and I know don’t treat women this way,” she said.
“Like us, women are worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it is to be a man.”
Down the Atlantic coast in West Palm Beach, Florida, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani fulminated against the media: the relationship between them and the Clinton campaign, and how it was detailed in recent revelations from Wikileaks.
“I don’t know how those Wikileaks came out. I’m not sure I like the way it happened. I don’t like the way a lot of stuff that happened against us happened. Some of it I happen to think is illegal—against us. But I’ll tell you what Wikileaks does do: It proves we’re not paranoid. We’re right,” said Giuliani of the right’s frequent claims of media bias against them, which he linked from the days of Reagan all the way to Trump.
Giuliani took particular aim at the New York Times—the “Clinton campaign newsletter,” he called it—and how it allowed Clinton’s camp “the chance to edit her quotes,” a reference to a leaked email showing reporter Mark Leibovich collaborating with Clinton communications aide Jennifer Palmieri about what portions of a Clinton transcript would be okay to print.
“You got to work hard to get the news nowadays. You got to look at these news outlets and these newspapers, and you got to listen directly to the candidates, because you can’t trust (the media). Because so many of them are so many embed—in some cases financially and in some cases ideologically—that you don’t get the truth anymore. You get it suppressed,” Giuliani added.
“Without any doubt the most important story of the last two to three weeks [has] been the revelations about Hillary Clinton that confirm what all of the people have always thought about her. There s a reason 65 percent of the American people don’t trust her, and she has proven they are right in the things that we can now read. So you go read them yourself and don’t trust the media.”
The contrast between the two surrogates—Obama commonly thought of as one of Clinton’s strongest, and Giuliani as one of Trump’s most loyal—could foreshadow the personal attacks against Trump’s character and Clinton’s credibility and perceived media favoritism that will feature prominently in the campaign’s final weeks.
There was already one example Thursday, just minutes after Giuliani wrapped up his remarks and left the stage. Trump emerged and echoed Giuliani’s media criticism, and also harangued the Times for its coverage this week of women who alleged sexual impropriety against him.
