In their own words: 50 reasons to vote for Clinton and against Trump

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Hillary Clinton

1. “I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And yes, I did. And you know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be president. And I think that’s a good thing.” Remark during the first presidential debate.

2. “As soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.” Response to Trump during the first presidential debate.

3. “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.” Comment in a September 2017 interview with ABC News on her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

4. “We will not build a wall. Instead, we will build an economy where everyone who wants a good-paying job can get one. And we’ll build a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who are already contributing to our economy.” Line from her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

5. “I alone can fix it? Isn’t he forgetting troops on the front lines? Police officers and firefighters who run toward danger? Doctors and nurses who care for us? Teachers who change lives? Entrepreneurs who see possibilities in every problem? Mothers who lost children to violence and are building a movement to keep other kids safe? He’s forgetting every last one of us. Americans don’t say, ‘I alone can fix it.’ We say, ‘We’ll fix it together.’” Line from the acceptance speech.

6. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” Line from the acceptance speech.

7. “Our girls would grow up with a president who proudly ranks women by their looks. Just imagine what that might do to your girls’ and women’s confidence and self-worth. Imagine what it will do to our boys.” Remark during a rally this month in Las Vegas as she asked the crowd to imagine a Trump presidency.

8. “People look at the Statue of Liberty and they see a proud symbol of our history as a nation of immigrants, a beacon of hope for people around the world. Donald sees the Statue of Liberty and sees a 4 — maybe a 5 if she loses the torch and tablet and changes her hair.” Joke during the Alfred Smith Dinner for charity last month in New York.

9. “Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different. They are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.” Line from a foreign policy speech in June.

10. “I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership. It goes back to the founding of our country. But I also believe that there can be and must be reasonable regulation. Because I support the Second Amendment doesn’t mean that I want people who shouldn’t have guns to be able to threaten you, kill you or members of your family. And so when I think about what we need to do, we have 33,000 people a year who die from guns. I think we need comprehensive background checks, need to close the online loophole, close the gun show loophole.” Comment during the third presidential debate.

11. “We have 11 million undocumented people; they have 4 million American citizen children — 15 million people. He said as recently as a few weeks ago in Phoenix that every undocumented person would be subject to deportation. ... It means you would have to have a massive law enforcement presence, where law enforcement officers would be going school to school, home to home, business to business, rounding up people who are undocumented. And we would then have to put them on trains, on buses to get them out of our country. I think that is an idea that is not in keeping with who we are as a nation.” Comment during the third presidential debate.

12. “On the day when I was in the Situation Room, monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting the ‘Celebrity Apprentice.’ So I’m happy to compare my 30 years of experience, what I’ve done for this country, trying to help in every way I could, especially kids and families get ahead and stay ahead, with your 30 years, and I’ll let the American people make that decision.” Comment during the third presidential debate.

13. “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like. So we now know what Donald thinks and what he says and how he acts toward women. That’s who Donald is.” Comment during the third presidential debate.

14. “He went after Mr. and Mrs. Khan, the parents of a young man who died serving our country, a Gold Star family, because of their religion. He went after John McCain, a prisoner of war, said he prefers ‘people who aren’t captured.’ He went after a federal judge, born in Indiana, but who Donald said couldn’t be trusted to try the fraud and racketeering case against Trump University because his parents were Mexican. ... This is a pattern, a pattern of divisiveness, of a very dark and in many ways dangerous vision of our country, where he incites violence, where he applauds people who are pushing and pulling and punching at his rallies. That is not who America is.” Comment during the third presidential debate.

15. “He lost the Iowa caucus. He lost the Wisconsin primary. He said the Republican primary was rigged against him. Then Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering; he claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged against him.” Comment during the third presidential debate.

16. “What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women, what he thinks about women, what he does to women. And he has said that the video doesn’t represent who he is. But I think it’s clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is because we’ve seen this throughout the campaign. We have seen him insult women. We’ve seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to 10. We’ve seen him embarrass women on TV and on Twitter. We saw him after the first debate spend nearly a week denigrating a former Miss Universe in the harshest, most personal terms. So, yes, this is who Donald Trump is.” Comment during the second presidential debate.

17. “Within hours I said that I was sorry about the way I talked about that because my argument is not with his supporters. It’s with him and with the hateful and divisive campaign that he has run, and the inciting of violence at his rallies, and the very brutal kinds of comments about not just women, but all Americans, all kinds of Americans.” Comment during the second presidential debate when asked about her “basket of deplorables” remark.

18. “Maya Angelou once said, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.” Line from several speeches.

19. “The man who today is the standard-bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage. Even the Republican speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as ‘the textbook definition of a racist comment.’” Line from an August speech in Reno.

20. “We white Americans need to do a better job of listening when African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day. We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility rather than assume that our experiences are everyone’s experiences. We all need to try as best we can to walk in one another’s shoes, to imagine what it would be like to sit our son or daughter down and have the talk about how carefully they need to act around police because the slightest wrong move could get them hurt or even killed.” Line from a speech to the NAACP’s annual convention in July in Cincinnati.

21. “Independent experts have looked at what I’ve proposed and looked at what Donald’s proposed, and basically they’ve said this: that if his tax plan, which would blow up the debt by over $5 trillion and would in some instances disadvantage middle-class families compared to the wealthy, were to go into effect, we would lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe have another recession. They’ve looked at my plans and they’ve said, ‘OK, if we can do this,’ and I intend to get it done, ‘we will have 10 million more new jobs because we will be making investments where we can grow the economy.’” Remark during the first presidential debate.

22. “He describes America as an embarrassment. He said — and I quote — ‘We’re becoming a Third World country.’ ... Go visit with the workers building rockets. That doesn’t happen in Third World countries.” Line from an August speech in Michigan, where Clinton toured rocket- and aircraft-manufacturing facilities.

23. “Some country is going to be the clean energy superpower of the 21st century and create millions of jobs and businesses. It’s probably going to be either China, Germany or America. I want it to be us.” Line from the Michigan speech.

24. “We believe that people should be respected and have dignity and have the right to marry, and so we’re going to keep working to protect the rights of women, to make sure that Planned Parenthood is not defunded.” Line from the Las Vegas speech.

25. “The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially tinged rumors. Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.” Line from the Reno speech.

Donald Trump

1. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything.” Trump caught on a hot microphone on the TV show “Access Hollywood.”

2. “His wife, if you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.” Comment made July 29 after Gold Star parent Khizr Khan challenged Trump during his speech at the Democratic National Convention.

3. “By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” Statement about Hillary Clinton at a rally in August.

4. “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.” Statement at a rally after the third presidential debate, in which Trump refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election if he lost.

5. “The man has very strong control over a country. It’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.” Comment about Russian President Vladimir Putin during the NBC Commander in Chief Forum in September.

6. “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Written statement in December 2015.

7. “I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.” Comment made during a rally in November 2015. The claim has been debunked.

8. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her ... wherever.” Comment made on CNN about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in August 2015, after Kelly pointedly questioned Trump about disparaging comments he’d made about women.

9. “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not supposed to say bad things, but really folks, come on. Are we serious?” Comment made to Rolling Stone about former Republican candidate Carly Fiorina in August 2015.

10. “He’s not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Comment about Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam prisoner of war, during the Family Leadership Summit in July 2015.

11. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you, they’re not sending you. ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Comment made as Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.

12. “Uh, I don’t know what I said! Uh, I don’t remember! He’s going, ‘I don’t remember!’” Comment made by Trump while mocking a disabled reporter in November 2015.

13. “Let me just tell you, I have had horrible rulings. I’ve been treated very unfairly by this judge. Now, this judge is of Mexican heritage.” Comment made in June about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, with Trump suggesting Curiel was biased against him because of his heritage. Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents.

14. “ISIS is honoring President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS. He is the founder of ISIS, OK? He is the founder. He founded ISIS. And I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.” Comment during a rally in August.

15. “No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.” Comment the day after the August rally, when a Republican radio host asked if the earlier comment should be interpreted to say that Obama and Clinton “created the vacuum” in the Middle East that led to the rise of ISIS.

16. “And you can tell them to go f--k themselves.” Comment made during a rally in February, referring to companies that have relocated overseas.

17. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell ... I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” Comment made during a rally in February.

18. “We’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.” Comment about a protester during a February rally in Las Vegas.

19. “Well, I certainly don’t incite violence. I don’t condone violence. And I don’t talk about violence.” Comment made during an interview when asked whether he had incited violence on the campaign trail.

20. “I never said that.” Interjection after Clinton, in one of the presidential debates, said he had called pregnancy an inconvenience to employers.

21. “Pregnancy is never ... it’s a wonderful thing for the woman, it’s a wonderful thing for the husband. It’s certainly an inconvenience for a business.” Statement during a 2004 interview with “Dateline NBC.”

22. “I don’t care.” Response to “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl in July when asked how he felt about running mate Mike Pence’s vote to authorize use of force in Iraq during 2002 as a House member. Trump, who had repeatedly criticized Clinton for voting the same way, said Pence was “entitled to make a mistake every once in a while.”

23.“But she’s not. No, she’s not.” Response to Stahl’s follow-up question in reference to Clinton, “But she’s not?”

24. “I did not, I did not. I do not say that.” Interjection during the first presidential debate as Clinton contended that Trump had called global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

25. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Tweet in November 2012.