Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump’s business record during a speech in Atlantic City, a town where Trump had several failed business ventures, telling voters that if the Republican is elected he will do “exactly the same thing to the United States that he did to Atlantic City.”
“Donald Trump says he’s going to run America like he ran his business,” Clinton said while standing in front of the foreclosed Trump Plaza building. “What he did was shameful and every single voter needs to know about it so he doesn’t do to our country what he did to his business.”
The presumptive Democratic nominee went on to list Trump’s business failures in Atlantic City, as well as the times he gone in to debt and never paid back the banks. She also criticized Trump for manufacturing his goods overseas rather than in the United States, saying “if you want to make America great again, how about start by making things in America!”
“I’ve thought a lot about my dad, he was a small businessman,” Clinton said. “If his customers would have done to him what Trump did to small businesses he wouldn’t have made it. So this is personal to me.”
The speech was the fourth in a series on general election rallies the presumptive Democratic nominee has had to point out the reasons Trump is “unfit” to be President of the United States—other speeches have focused on Trump’s economic policies, trade policies and national security. As both Clinton and Trump fight for the vote of blue-collar, working class voters, the former Secretary of State emphasized Trump’s duplicitous nature.
“The people he’s trying to get to vote for him now are the same people he’s been exploiting for years; working people,” Clinton stated.
She added, “What he did here in Atlantic City is exactly what he will do if we wins in November.”
Clinton had a local businessman whose business was damaged by the construction, of Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino on the boardwalk. The businessman, Marty Rosenberg, owned a glass company contracted by Trump to work on the Taj Mahal, but he and his workers were never paid for their services.
“It was this time that Donald Trump made a promise to me, my family, and to the people of Atlantic City. If you do a good job — if you do a good job, in a timely manner, you will be paid an agreed upon, agreement. This promise went unfulfilled,” Rosenberg, said “All the while, Mr. Trump went about his extravagant lifestyle, never giving any of us a second thought. I am here today to help ensure that this sort of manipulation of people by Trump will not continue on a national stage.”
Following the speech, the Trump campaign responded that his practices it Atlantic City are “commonly used’ in business and that “nobody understand the economy like I do and no one, especially not Crooked Hillary Clinton, will do more for the economy than I will.”
Clinton is headed to walk with Local 44 picketers outside Trump’s Taj Mahal.
