Team Clinton Fires Back Over Trump’s Philadelphia Diss

Those associated with Hillary Clinton’s camp have come out swinging in the wake of inflammatory comments by Donald Trump regarding the state of inner-city Philadelphia and its minority inhabitants. According to Trump, Philadelphia was a city in decline, one riddled with crime and fear. He called it “sad,” announced that Mayor Jim Kenney is doing a terrible job, and implied systematic racism against the black inhabitants of inner-city Philly. Trump, who got his degree in business at the Wharton School and who used to live in Philly, claimed that the city is much worse off than it was back in his day.

Clinton’s team came out swinging against Trump’s accusations.

“Trump is full of insults, fear, and stereotypes that set our communities and city back and further divide our country,” said Rep. Robert Brady (D., Pa.), chairman of the city’s Democratic Party, said in a news release circulated by the Clinton campaign. The release continued to quote other lawmakers from the Clinton camp, including State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Philadelphian: “Donald Trump showed up in Philly for an hour-long photo op and managed to insult our entire city by suggesting Philadelphia is more like Afghanistan,” Hughes stated. “Imagine him in a foreign capital trying to practice diplomacy – he’s one reckless comment away from an international incident.” The general consensus was that Trump’s comments were disrespectful at best – Mayor Kenney called him a “nincompoop.”

Trump made the comments to the Philadelphia Inquirer following a roundtable meeting with African American leaders on North Broad Street. The leaders were sympathetic to Trump’s message, which is uncommon among minorities in Philadelphia, where polls show Clinton leading among that demographic by as much as seventy percent. This is despite Trump’s assertion that Democratic leadership is doing nothing good for the people in Philadelphia and that the electorate is fed up with it. It doesn’t appear that Trump’s mouthy brand of “fact”-spewing is resonating much with minority voters in the City of Brotherly Love.