Trump says Clinton wouldn’t be prosecuted even if she shot someone

By Nick Corasaniti, New York Times News Service

Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016 | 2 a.m.

PENSACOLA, Fla. — Donald Trump, in escalating attacks against Hillary Clinton, suggested Friday that his opponent was so immune to prosecution that she could shoot someone in front of thousands of witnesses and not be prosecuted.

“She is being so protected,” Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, said to a crowd of more than 10,000 at an evening rally here. “She could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn’t be prosecuted. OK? That’s what’s happening.”

Trump’s comments followed an extended, and at times vicious and unscripted, criticism of Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, whom he called “an unstable person.” He repeatedly criticized the decision not to prosecute her over her email scandal, and also her record as secretary of state.

Trump’s remarks seemed to play off a line he used during the primary race, in which he said that his supporters were so devoted to him that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose any of them.

Energized by a raucous and rowdy crowd, Trump often veered from his prepared remarks, offering more provocative declarations of his platform and relishing the extended cheers he regularly received.

With regard to Iran, which Trump has spoken of antagonistically, he suggested that should the country harass a U.S. vessel, he would respond with force.

He also referred to the episode in January in which Iran seized two U.S. Navy patrol boats and accused them of spying.

“By the way, when Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats,” Trump said, “and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”

Later in the rally, he again criticized Clinton over what he said was an aggressive foreign policy.

“She’s trigger-happy,” he said.

At a fundraiser Friday night in Manhattan, Clinton strongly criticized Trump, as well as his supporters.

“I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think, ‘Well, he’s done this time,'” she said at the event, which featured Barbra Streisand. “We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And, unfortunately, there are people like that.”