During an interview Thursday in Las Vegas, Hillary Clinton curiously brought up Donald Trump when questioned about the race-motivated shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine individuals the night before.
Clinton particularly suggested that free speech is at least in part to blame for such tragedies, citing Trump’s “inflammatory” statements about Mexicans during his presidential announcement speech as an example of words that can incite racism.
“We have to have a candid national conversation about race and about discrimination, prejudice, hatred,” Clinton explained during the exclusive interview with KNPB’s Jon Ralston. “The people who do this kind of drastically horrible act are a very small percentage. But unfortunately the public discourse is sometimes hotter and more negative than it should be, which can, in my opinion, trigger people who are less than stable.”
Guilty of such addictive negativity is, according to Clinton, her 2016 foe Donald Trump.
“For example, a recent entry into the Republican presidential campaign said some very inflammatory things about Mexicans,” Clinton continued. “Everybody should stand up and say that’s not acceptable. You don’t talk like that on talk radio. You don’t talk like that on the kind of political campaigns.”
Trump’s comments about Mexicans came during his discussion of immigration in his announcement speech Tuesday.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
As soon as Ralston tried to push back on Clinton’s apparent stance against free speech, she quickly focused her attention on the country’s gun laws, declaring that we need to have a “better balance” when it comes to gun policy in America.
“The Congress stops in the face of tremendous lobbying pressure from the gun lobby, so maybe on a local and state level we have to keep building toward some kind of more sensible balanced gun policy,” the Democratic presidential candidate suggested.
Earlier on Thursday, Hillary delivered remarks at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Las Vegas during which she mentioned the Charleston tragedy.
“How many innocent people in our country — little children to church members to movie theater attendees — how many people do we need to see cut down before we act?” she asked.
Watch the full interview with Ralston below, the choice comments coming at about 13:20.
H/T Reason
