Hillary Clinton late Monday hit back at Donald Trump after nearly two days of attacks on her and former President Bill Clinton. In a statement her campaign said she wouldn’t be “pushed around” by Trump like his GOP rivals or “bullied and distracted” by the mogul’s rhetoric.
“When [Trump’s] insults are directed at women, immigrants, Asian-Americans, Muslims, the disabled, or hard working Americans looking to raise their wages — Hillary Clinton will stand up to him, as she has from the beginning,” a campaign spokeswoman said.
Trump on Monday again warned Clinton against attempting to use “the woman’s card” on him, a day after he accused the former secretary of state of unfairly trading on her gender. The billionaire’s brushback follows his labeling Bill Clinton as “fair game” on Sunday, as the former president prepares to hit the trail next week to campaign for his wife.
“With all of her past and her past dealings and, frankly, she’s been involved in it with her husband as much as anybody, for her to be discussing that I think is out of bounds and I’ve let them know that,” Trump said during an interview on Radio Iowa. “Probably maybe more so than anybody I know she shouldn’t be discussing that.”
Trump made similar comments during a Sunday interview on Fox News, when he called out Bill Clinton as “fair game because his presidency was really considered to be very troubled because of all the things that she’s talking to me about.”
“She’s mentioning sexism,” Trump continued, referencing a recent interview in which Clinton told the Des Moines Register the billionaire had “demonstrated a penchant for sexism.”
He kept up the line of attack Monday morning, again slamming the former president and former secretary of state.
“If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong!” Trump tweeted.
Trump started the latest Twitter storm Saturday night, writing, “Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE’S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!”
On Sunday morning, a little more than 12 hours later, Trump gloated about it.
“I turned her exact words against her,” he said.
Trump got some indirect support from one-time rival Carly Fiorina, who said Monday that knocking Bill Clinton is always “fair game” but said Hillary Clinton’s claiming sexism is not.
“Hillary Clinton, first of all, calls everybody a sexist and that’s not fair game,” Fiorina said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “She called Bernie Sanders a sexist because he criticized her. She’s going to play that card, we need to be realistic, and of course she’s going to talk about the Republican war on women, which doesn’t exist.”
Trump also took an indirect shot at GOP primary rival Marco Rubio, who will be accompanied on the campaign trail in Iowa next week by South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, the congressman who is leading an ongoing Benghazi investigation and recently questioned Hillary Clinton on Capitol Hill.
“I hope he does a better job than he did on the Benghazi hearings,” Trump said sarcastically, “because they were a total disaster.”
On Saturday, Gowdy in a statement called Rubio “a rock solid conservative and a leader we can trust.”
“Everyone was really looking forward to something that was going to be really productive and he didn’t win with those hearings,” Trump told the Fox News hosts. “I hope he does a lot better for Marco than he did for the Benghazi hearings, because they were not good. That was not a pretty picture.”
