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Hillary Clinton: I have experience with men ‘off the reservation’ like Donald Trump

Posted at 10:12 PM, Apr 30, 2016
and last updated 2016-04-30 22:33:45-04

Hillary Clinton at the CNN Democratic Debate at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, Tuesday, October 13, 2015.

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton on Friday brushed off Donald Trump’s sometimes personal attacks against her as him being “off the reservation” — something she said she has experience with.

“I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.”

The Democratic presidential front-runner did not elaborate which men she was referring to.

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Tapper questioned Clinton about Trump’s series of attacks on her, including nicknaming her “Crooked Hillary,” saying she’s only succeeding because she plays “the woman card” and insinuating about her personal life with tweets like one Friday that called her “one of the all time great enablers.”

“I think the only card she has is the women’s card,” Trump said Tuesday night in New York. “She has got nothing else going. Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5% of the vote.”

Clinton said she had no intention to respond.

“I’m not going to deal with their temper tantrums or their bullying or their efforts to try to provoke me,” she said of the men she had experience with. “He can say whatever he wants to say about me, I could really care less. I’m going to stand up for what I think the American people need and want in the next president.”

The former secretary of state also repeated her line from her victory speech after Tuesday night’s near sweep of the Northeast primaries, saying if the “women’s card” means sticking up for women, “deal me in.”

Friday night, Amanda Renteria, the Clinton campaign’s political director, walked back Clinton’s use of “reservation,” a term she said had “some very offensive roots” to Native Americans.

“About the use of an expression today that has some very offensive roots…Divisive language has no place in our politics,” Renteria tweeted.

She added, “@HillaryClinton meant no disrespect to Native Americans. She wants this election to be about lifting people up, not tearing them down.”

Bernie Sanders

Coming off her big primary night Tuesday, Clinton declined to call herself the “presumptive nominee” as Trump did, but she did say she believes she will win the nomination.

“I consider myself as someone who’s on the path, and obviously I’m very far ahead in both the popular vote and the delegate count, so I think the path leads to the nomination,” Clinton said. “But, you know, I’m going to keep competing.”

She also said she expects Sanders to work with her on planning the Democratic National Convention and the platform the party will adopt at it, and was quick to praise him and his supporters.

She said even after a race that grew increasingly bitter, she expects the two candidates to come together, like Clinton did with President Barack Obama when she lost the primary to him in 2008. She endorsed Obama “immediately” after dropping out in June, she said.

“I was pleased when Sen. Sanders said the other day he’s going to work tirelessly, seven days a week, to make sure that Donald Trump is not president and I really welcome that,” Clinton said. “We had run a really tough race (in 2008) all the way to the end but I endorsed him, I began working for him, and of course we talked about the platform.”

She also suggested Sanders supporters who say they cannot support Clinton will come around.

“I think when I dropped, I think the polling was that 40% of my supporters said they would not support Sen. Obama. Thankfully, the vast majority of them did, so this is a natural kind of process that I think will play itself out,” Clinton said.

But she said, speaking from experience, Sanders will see the writing on the wall.

“There comes a time when you have to look at the reality,” Clinton said. “In fact, in ’08 I was much closer in both popular vote and pledged delegates to Sen. Obama than is the case right now, but eventually I just decided that I had to withdraw and support Sen. Obama because the goal was to make sure we had a Democrat in the White House.”

Harsh words for Trump

Though Clinton wouldn’t respond directly to Trump’s attacks on her, personally, she did go after him on a number of fronts.

She criticized his foreign policy as “reckless, loose, dangerous” and said he is “really insulting to women,” casting doubt that Sanders supporters would migrate to him over her when he also doesn’t believe in climate change or raising the minimum wage.

Clinton also derided Trump for what she characterized as a “secret plan” to defeat ISIS and said she found his comments lately “disturbing.”

“I don’t think loose talk about loose nukes, I don’t think turning our back on our strongest allies, I don’t think pretending you have some sort of secret plan is a very smart way to go forward in leading the world, which is what we must do,” Clinton said.

She also laughed when Tapper asked if at Trump’s wedding to Melania in 2005 Clinton ever imagined she’d be running against him in a presidential election, adding she didn’t think she’d be running.

“Never crossed my mind, no. Never crossed my mind,” she said.