Washington
Hillary Clinton's alleged quid pro quo with Clinton Foundation donors is starting to haunt her campaign and Donald Trump continues to flip-flop on major issues, as the two principal US presidential candidates, neither of them much liked or trusted by a majority of American voters, stumble forward in their campaign to win the White House in November.
With close to 60% of American voters expressing distrust of both candidates on issues ranging from racism and temperament (in case of Trump) to probity and integrity (in case of Clinton), both campaign are trying to fine-tune and finesse their messaging to appeal to the roughly 20%of undecidedfloating voters who will swing the election one way or the other.
The Clinton campaign is vigorously pushing back against unsubstantiated reports about her health problems, using humour and irony from a supportive liberal media to deride the Trump fan club's conspiratorial theories about how unfit and unwell she is to be president. Some have turned the question around to question Trump's own health and fitness considering he would be the oldest president ever elected if he were to win in November.
A lot harder to turn around are the charges surrounding the Clinton Foundation, particularly after it transpires that more than half the private citizens who contributed to or supported the foundation got face-time with her when she was secretary of state.
Although the quid pro quo charges are not clearly estab lished, integrity monitors are leery of the frequency with which foundation executives tapped into Clinton's aides at the state department seeking support for those who contributed to or were associated with the foundation.
“It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins,“ Trump told a crowd in Austin, Texas on Tuesday . Clinton aides are contesting the charges of nexus, saying the reports “cherrypicked a limited subset of secretary Clinton's schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation.“
While Trump has gleefully jumped on the material to corner Clinton, the candidate himself is not exactly a example of financial rectitude considering he has declined to even disclose his tax returns.Besides, it transpires, he himself has donated at least $100,000 to a foundation he now describes as a “big-time criminal enterprise.“
But such contradictions are par for course for a man who once was once buddies with the Clintons and attributed the donation to his need to get along with politicians.
In the same spirit, Trump is now changing course on some of his more hardline outlook on immigration and race issues. There is a sudden outreach towards black and Hispanic communities among whom he has dismal support (less than 2% and 25% respectively).Trump was also planning to campaign in black majority inner cities such as Detroit after months of disdaining AfricanAmericans, who constitute nearly 12% of the electorate.
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