Clinton sees benefits in Trump’s personal attacks

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Hillary Clinton has a message for Donald Trump: Keep on talking.

She’s just weeks away from wrapping up the Democratic presidential nomination, and friends, aides and supporters describe a candidate who isn’t particularly rattled by what she expects will be Trump’s increasingly direct attacks on her marriage and husband’s personal indiscretions.

In fact, Clinton believes that she can turn Trump’s deeply personal assaults to her benefit, they say, particularly among suburban women who could be crucial to her hopes in the fall. Her plan is never to engage in any back-and-forth over the scandals. Instead, she’ll merely cast him as a bully and talk about policy.

“I don’t care what he says about me, but I do resent what he says about other people, other successful women, who have worked hard, who have done their part,” she told an audience in Louisville, Ky., this month.

Trump has made it clear that nothing is off-limits. He described one of the allegations of past sexual misconduct involving Bill Clinton as a rape.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton says persistent rival Bernie Sanders “has every right to finish off his campaign however he chooses.” But she says she wants to focus on Trump because his is not “a normal candidacy.”

Clinton noted in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that she’s won 3 million more votes than Sanders in the Democratic primaries. She said it’s time to talk about Trump because his candidacy poses “immediate dangers” to the country.

Clinton criticized Trump for being open to pulling the U.S. out of NATO and allowing some other countries to have nuclear weapons.

She said she’s willing to talk with Sanders and “take into account” what the Vermont senator is asking for at the party’s national convention this summer.

Also airing Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he’d “absolutely” consider being Trump’s running mate. He’d also “absolutely” consider being Clinton’s.

And if those don’t work out, the reality-show star says maybe he’ll run for president in 2020 or 2024.