Amid rumors she is contemplating a third try at the White House in 2020, Hillary Clinton accused the Trump administration and Republicans of attempting to “divide and conquer” American, charging they are “trying to rip the heart out” of the nation and “turn the clock back to the 1850s.”
The former first lady, senator and secretary of state was addressing the American Federation of Teachers conference Friday afternoon in Pittsburgh, the Washington Times reported.
She accused the Trump administration of an unprecedented level of “organized cruelty” for enforcing a law in effect during the two previous administrations that separates adults from children at the border if the child is in danger, the adult does not have custody of the child or if the adult has broken a law.
“I believe with all my heart that the test of any society is how we treat the most vulnerable among us, particularly our youngest, our oldest, our people with disabilities, and right now, my friends, our country is failing that test,” Clinton said. “We have never seen such organized cruelty, disdain and contempt for those values.”
She said people in America who harbor bigotry “used to hide the way they felt,” but that has changed.
“Boy, not today,” she said.
Clinton charged Republicans “are trying to rip the heart out of America.”
“They want to turn us against each other,” she said. “They want to divide and conquer. Fundamental rights, civic virtue, even facts, reason and evidence are under assault. But at the same time, we are seeing an unprecedented outpouring of grassroots activism and energy.”
Media images of illegal-alien children in “cages” – some of which were taken when Obama was president – fueled outrage over the family separations. President Trump has signed an executive order to halt the separations while urging Congress to fix the problem permanently.
Clinton said Friday the future of the country is at stake in the November midterm elections, and she asserted President Trumps Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, intends to reverse decades of progress in America.
“This nomination holds out the threat of devastating consequences for workers’ rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, women’s rights,” she said.
She called the nomination of Kavanaugh “a blatant attempt by this administration to shift the balance of the court for decades and to reverse decades of progress.”
“You know I used to worry that they wanted to turn the clock back to the 1950s, now I worry they want to turn it back to the 1850s.”
See video of Hillary Clinton’s speech:
[jwplayer rasQmPl5]
Resist ‘with strength and resolve’
Last month, Clinton mocked people urging civility in public discourse regarding Trump’s enforcement of federal immigration laws, calling on Democrats to resist her 2016 opponent with “strength and resolve.”
Her comments came shortly after a poll found 42 percent of American voters believe a second civil war is likely within the next five years. It was conducted as several Trump administration officials were publicly harassed by protesters, including White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who was booted from a Virginia restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., a day later called for more harassment of Trump administration officials. And, as WND reported, a writer for the popular progressive news website Splinter warned Trump supporters that if they have a problem with the heckling of administration officials in public places, they haven’t seen anything yet, posing the prospect of 1970s-style bombings. The announcement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement prompted a wave of Democrat vows “to resist,” with a generational shift of the court at stake. Among the many notes of alarm, progressive author Elaine Atwell tweeted “we may have just left the point at which we could rely on democratic norms to fix our government, and are now on the road to literal revolution!”
Former President Obama, meanwhile, told Democrats at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Beverly Hills, California, on June 28 that the country and the world are on the brink and “you are right to be concerned.”
Obama said Republicans and Democrats tell “different stories” about the way things are.
“There’s a fundamental contrast of how we view the world,” Obama said. “We are seeing the consequences of when one vision is realized, or in charge.”
