Democrat Hillary Clinton, seeking to dampen Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s growing appeal with working-class voters, on Tuesday accused him of having cheered on the 2008 housing market crash.
Clinton’s campaign released an ad with audio that the presumptive Republican nominee recorded in 2006 for his now-defunct Trump University venture. Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, in remarks on a “bubble burst,” said: “I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy” property and “make a lot of money.”
Clinton’s campaign and her surrogates used the recording to argue that she would take better care of the U.S. economy. Clinton is seeking to blunt the inroads that Trump has been making with voters in crucial states such as Florida and Ohio.
Trump defended his comments on Tuesday evening at a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, saying buying when the housing market was down showed smart dealmaking skills that he would bring to the White House.
“I’m a businessman, that’s what I’m supposed to do,” Trump said. “I feel badly for everybody. What am I going to do? I’m in business.”
The New Yorker also impersonated Clinton on the campaign trail, who he said “screams,” and said other big names in business did similar deals as he did before the housing crisis.
Trump has never held elected office and often touts his history as a businessman in response to accusations that he is unprepared to assume the presidency.
Anti-Trump protestors and police clashed outside the Albuquerque convention center on Tuesday when protestors tried to storm the center, calling for an end to the Trump rally.
Albuquerque police said on Twitter that protestors threw rocks and bottles and a door to the facility appeared to have been hit with something. Police said the only arrests so far had been inside the rally, where Trump was interrupted multiple times by protestors.
Opinion polls in key states show Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and Trump in a tight race ahead of the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Nationally, Trump has been rising in polls to pull roughly even with Clinton.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who is a favorite of financial reformers, bashed Trump in prepared remarks released ahead of a speech in Washington on Tuesday. Trump’s 2006 comments, she said, amounted to rooting for “people to get thrown out on the street.”
“The rest of us were horrified by the 2008 financial crisis,” Warren said in the comments. “But Donald Trump was drooling over the idea of a housing meltdown – because it meant he could buy up a bunch more property on the cheap.”
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