Pushing back on allegations that he is a racist, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday declared he was adding a qualifier to his ‘Make American Great Again’ slogan – ‘For Everyone.’
“You know, I have the theme ‘Make America Great Again’, and I've added a couple of things... Right now I’m adding make America great again — I’m adding ‘for everyone’, because it’s really going to be for everyone. It’s not going to be for a group of people, it’s going to be for everyone. It’s true,” Mr. Trump said at a rally 100 miles south of Washington DC, in the capital of Virginia, one of the 15 States the Trump team has identified for focused campaign ahead of the November presidential election.
Mr. Trump said the African-Americans and Hispanics were facing a tough time, and his policies that would bring back jobs to America would help everyone.
Attacks on critics Mr. Trump did not elaborate on his ‘for everyone’ policy in his 60-minute speech flecked with attacks on his Republican critics Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, and Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Trump’s criticism of a judge recently was described by Republican Speaker Paul Ryan as a “textbook definition of a racist comment”. Mr. Romney had also criticised the candidate for the comment.
“Mitt Romney had his chance to beat a failed President but he choked like a dog. Now he calls me racist-but I am least racist person there is,” he tweeted before the rally.
“Don King, and so many other African-Americans who know me well and endorsed me, would not have done so if they thought I was a racist!” he said in a tweet later. Mr. King is an African-American boxing promoter.
“I am the least racist person, folks,” Mr. Trump said, repeating the statement several times, at the rally. “Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their colour,” Mr. Trump said at a Christian conference earlier on Friday.
Meanwhile, he is not holding back on the torrent of attacks targeting Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, which many consider racist. Mr. Trump has been calling the Senator “Pocahontas”, a Native American figure romanticised in folklores.
Mr. Trump began using this term to allude to Ms. Warren’s suggestions earlier that her family may have Native lineage. The Senator has emerged as a combative challenger to Mr. Trump in public exchanges and is speculated to be a possible vice-presidential candidate of Ms. Clinton.
‘Criminal misconduct’ Mr. Trump said this was the first time a President was endorsing a candidate suspected of criminal misconduct, referring to Barack Obama’s endorsement of Ms. Clinton. “You have a President coming out and endorsing somebody who is under criminal investigation. Is this supposed to be the way the country supposed to be?”
“My debate with Crooked Hillary will be the most watched TV event in American history.” Mr. Trump also said he would make a major policy speech on Clinton in New Hampshire on Monday.
Countries like China and Mexico, he said, are destroying the U.S. He reiterated that he would make the wall on the Mexico border, which some day may be called Trump Wall. “[W]e have very stupid people representing in trade... We are losing badly. We have the smartest people in the world. But we are using dumbest people,” he alleged.
