Dear Commons Community,
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came out swinging yesterday at Donald Trump just before endorsing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president.
“Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself,” Warren said at the American Constitution Society of Law and Policy National Convention in Washington. As reported in The Huffington Post:
“Warren, who has railed against the presumptive GOP nominee for the past several weeks, unleashed a withering condemnation of Trump’s racist attacks on federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over two lawsuits against Trump University.
“He’s a Mexican,” Trump said of the judge last week. “We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can’t even believe.”
Trump has said Curiel, a U.S. citizen born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, should be dismissed from the case because of his “Mexican heritage.” He also called him a “hater.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, ashamed,” Warren said. “Ashamed for using the megaphone of a presidential campaign to attack a judge’s character and integrity simply because you think you have some God-given right to steal people’s money and get away with it. You shame yourself and you shame this great country.”
She continued: “Like all federal judges, Judge Curiel is bound by the federal code of judicial ethics not to respond to these attacks. Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself — exactly what you would expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully.”
“You, Donald Trump, are a total disgrace,” she added.
Trump’s attacks have created a firestorm for Republicans, as many party members are twisting themselves in knots to defend their nominee without alienating voters. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called Trump’s statements the “textbook definition of racism,” but still intends to vote for him.
Warren’s volleys lifted her already-bitter feud with Trump to a new level, and gave a glimpse of what’s to come as she goes public with her support of Clinton.”
There are only 150 days left until the election on November 8th.
Tony
I’m not sure it takes a lot to bait Trump into an angry, hysterical, infantile response. They could have pissed him off equally by saying, “We think Mr. Trump is a thoughtful, dedicated, and intelligent man but we disagree with him on some issues,” or even by saying nothing at all. Even total capitulation doesn’t really appease Trump; he frequently insults and mocks Christie, his first endorser, for example.