The Republican presidential candidate turned the usually friendly Al Smith Dinner into a vicious attack.
As anyone who has followed this election has noticed, Donald J. Trump is not exactly the King of Nice. And he showed that while speaking at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation, an event that usually features good-natured roasting and self-deprecating jokes.
Both Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton were in attendance, as is tradition for presidential candidates. Not surprisingly, they continued their own debate tradition of not shaking hands, and any hopes of it being a chance to heal some of the wounds caused by the vicious attacks between the two sides were thrown out the window when Trump got up to speak.
Trump was the first to speak, and his jokes often sounded more like just straight up attacks with no punch lines. He talked about how everyone loved him and his money before he ran for president, and then when he ran everyone decided he was a “scoundrel.” The comments were met with stone-cold silence from the crowd.
He did manage to land a few jokes, including the following one about Clinton’s emails, referencing how she was essentially “pardoned” by the FBI for not being charged: “And even tonight, with all of the heated back and forth between my opponent and me at the debate last night, we have proven that we can actually be civil with each other. In fact just before taking the dais, Hillary accidentally bumped into me, and she very civilly said, ‘Pardon me.'”
Further joking about his claim that he would seek to prosecute her once in office, he added: “”And I very politely replied, ‘Let me talk to you about that after I get into office.'”
But things took a turn after that, with Trump calling Clinton corrupt multiple times without a hint of a joke, to the point that it drew boos from the crowd. He got more boos when he referenced emails from Clinton apparently knocking conservative catholics – the dinner is hosted for the benefit of Catholic charities.
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