Clinton At NAACP Convention: ‘The Madness Has To Stop’

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, pictured here at a rally in Virginia on July 14, spoke at the annual NAACP convention in Cincinnati on Monday. During her remarks, she said the violance involving police officers "must stop" and criticized GOP candidate Donald Trump for controversial positions he has taken in the past year. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

CINCINNATI, July 18 (UPI) — As the Republican National Convention prepared to get underway in northeast Ohio Monday, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton spoke bluntly in the southern part of the state about the recent rash of bloody police shootings.

“This madness has to stop,” Clinton said in Cincinnati at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Watching the news from Baton Rouge yesterday, my heart broke. Not just for those officers and their grieving families, but for all of us.”

Clinton made the remarks after noting the spate of police officer-involved gun violence that has occurred in the United States this month — the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on July 5 and 6, and then the targeted shootings of officers in Dallas a day later and Sunday’s attack in Baton Rouge.
“We need one another,” she added. “And we need leaders like the NAACP. We need police officers to help us make progress. These murderers threaten all of that.

“Killing police officers is a terrible crime.”

Clinton’s remarks came hours before the start of the GOP convention in Cleveland, which will officially nominate billionaire Donald Trump as the party’s presidential candidate. In her speech, she added that as president, Trump would not be an effective leader in bridging the gap between embattled citizens and the law enforcement community.

Video: WLWT-TV Cincinnati

“My opponent in this race may have a different view, but there is nowhere I’d rather be than right here with all of you,” Clinton said before detailing some of her plans to increase unification and more harmony among whites and minorities.

“The Republican nominee for president will do the exact opposite,” she added. “He might say otherwise if he were here, but of course he declined your invitation.”

The former New York senator also pointed out many of the controversial remarks Trump has made over the last year — and even one he made nearly 45 years ago.

“Donald Trump led the movement to delegitimize our first black president, trumpeting the so-called ‘birther’ movement,” she continued.
“Donald Trump plays coy with white supremacists. Donald Trump insults Mexican immigrants, even an American judge born of Mexican heritage. Donald Trump demeans women. Donald Trump wants to ban an entire religion from entering our country. And Donald Trump loves to talk to the press. But let’s not forget, the first time Donald Trump was quoted in the New York Times was in 1973 when the Justice Department went after his company for refusing to rent apartments to African Americans.

“We have heard a lot of troubling things about Donald Trump but that one is shocking. This man is the nominee of the party of [Abraham] Lincoln. And we are watching it become the party of Trump.”

Trump did not immediately respond to Clinton’s remarks Monday.

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