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By:
AFP | |||||||||
| Posted:
Sep,21-2016 15:29:57
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HOUSTON
Donald Trump took his campaign to Texas on Sunday, bashing Hillary Clinton's immigration policies as too lax, in a state still up for grabs on Election Day.
With polls showing a tightening race just over seven weeks before the November 8 election, the Republican candidate turned up the vitriol, saying that as president, his Democratic rival would virtually end border enforcement and place the country "in grave peril".
Mr Trump was speaking a day after a much--hyped televised event in which, after years of questioning whether Barack Obama was an American citizen, he finally declared that the president "was born in the United States, period".
But he also made the surprising charge--refuted by fact--checkers--that it was Mrs Clinton who originated the "birther" theories about Mr Obama.
On Saturday, speaking before a sympathetic audience that included people who said their friends or family members had been killed by undocumented immigrants,Trump continued his sharp attacks on Mrs Clinton.
The immigration issue has been central to Trump's campaign since he said last summer that many Mexican immigrants were drug smugglers and rapists.
The candidate made it clear Saturday that he is not about to give up on the attack line, even at the risk of offending many Hispanic voters.
Mr Trump asserted that Mrs Clinton would "implement amnesty by executive order, violating our constitution and putting the entire nation in grave peril".
Mrs Clinton has called for a softening of immigration practices, saying she would deport only violent criminals and terrorists, a position in stark contrast to Trump's vow to build a border wall and deport huge numbers of the undocumented.
His suggestion that immigrants are disproportionately responsible for serious crime appears unfounded, according to several studies.
ORIGIN OF THEORY
However, Mr Trump insisted on Saturday that Americans are being killed on a daily basis by the undocumented.
"Every day our border remains open,innocent Americans are needlessly victimised and killed," he said.
"Every day we fail to enforce our laws...a loving parent is at risk of losing their child."
Meanwhile, Ms Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in 2008 until the Iowa caucuses, has admitted that a Clinton campaign staffer had, in fact, circulated the Birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born outside the US and therefore potentially ineligible to serve in the presidency.
Ms Doyle made the admission on Twitter as she responded to former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Fleischer said that Clinton's staff had spread the rumour.
Ms Doyle said that was a "lie" --but admitted, in the same tweet, that she had fired the "rogue" staffer who had used email to spread the theory.
Ms Doyle appeared about an hour later on CNN with Wolf Blitzer to address the issue once again.
She denied that Hillary Clinton had started the Birther theory--then admitted that someone in the Clinton campaign had, in fact, been involved.
Ms Doyle went on to relate how she personally called Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to apologise, and he accepted.
Mr Blitzer then asked her about the Mark Penn memorandum, in which the campaign's strategist proposed exploiting Obama's "lack of American roots".
VOTE FOR CLINTON
Ms Doyle asserted, and Mr Blitzer agreed, that the memo had nothing to do with Birtherism.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump repeated his charge that Mrs Clinton would introduce "total amnesty in the first 100 days, which means Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare for illegal immigrants", her website does not mention amnesty.
It does promise to "introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within (the) first 100 days", lifting the threat of deportation in many cases.
Mrs Clinton, who returned to the campaign trail on Thursday after a bout with pneumonia, has pressed the theme that her Republican rival is unfit to be president.
"His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie" about Obama's birth, she said. "There is no erasing it in history."
"He's feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country," she added.
Appearing alongside Mrs Clinton at the Congressional Black Caucus gala Saturday, President Obama delivered a forceful plea to black voters to stop Trump from becoming president.
"My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot," Mr Obama said.
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