WASHINGTON — Better to suffer a disabling injury than to be a con man like Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) suggested Friday after the Republican presidential nominee belittled an accident that left the Nevada Democrat blind in one eye.
Reid has been hammering away in recent days and weeks at Trump’s morals, hypocrisy, lack of fitness to lead America and even his physical fitness, with the latter attack stemming from Trump’s criticism of Hillary Clinton’s health.
Reid said earlier this week that Trump wasn’t in much of a position to criticize his Democratic rival because he “is 70 years old, he’s not slim and trim, he brags about eating fast food every day.”
Asked about that remark in a Washington Post interview, Trump, who once infamously mocked a disabled reporter, responded with a similar sort of wit, belittling Reid for the injury the senator suffered while working out with exercise bands more than a year ago.
One of the bands popped, and Reid crashed into a cabinet. He broke ribs and bones in his face, requiring multiple surgeries. Reid cannot see from one eye and still uses a cane.
The way Trump’s mind works, that was fodder for a put down when the Post’s Robert Costa mentioned the “slim and trim” line.
“Harry Reid? I think he should go back and start working out again with his rubber work-out pieces,” Trump said.
Reid probably didn’t feel too badly about the gibe, but it gave him one more opening to slam just about everything about Trump.
“Donald Trump can make fun of the injury that crushed the side of my face and took the sight in my right eye all he wants - I’ve dealt with tougher opponents than him,” Reid said in a statement Friday. “I may not be able to see out of my right eye, but with my good eye, I can see that Trump is a man who inherited his money and spent his entire life pretending like he earned it.”
“In Searchlight [Nevada, where Reid was raised], we learned a thing or two about hard work that Trump may not have learned at his boarding school,” Reid added.
Here’s more from his statement:
Trump rips off working people with scams like Trump University. And while the people he ripped off suffer, Trump sits at the posh resort he bought with his daddy’s money, with no understanding of the misery he caused.
Now, Trump’s business interests in foreign countries and his Ponzi-scheme fraud of a ‘charity’ make clear that Trump intends to scam all of America just like he rips off hard-working people.Trump can insult me all he wants but the American people deserve answers to these questions:
Why did Trump appear to use his charity to enrich himself and bribe elected officials who were investigating his scams?
Why does Trump refuse to cut ties with business interests that would allow him to exploit American foreign policy to enrich himself?
What is Trump hiding in his tax returns?
If Trump wants to be president, he should be properly vetted. If Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan had the public’s interest at heart, they would lead the Republican Congress to investigate these and other questions with a fraction of the energy and taxpayer money Congressional Republicans used to pursue Huma Abedin’s maternity leave records. But Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan want to leave town for another two months, just a few weeks after returning from the longest summer recess in more than half a century. And the Republican Congress has shown nothing but blind obedience to Trump, going so far as to hold a Supreme Court seat open for six months in the hopes that Trump can fill it.
If the Republican Congress refuses to do its job, the media has an even greater responsibility to get answers to these questions.
We know how to spot a con artist in Las Vegas.
And Donald Trump is a con-artist.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularlyincitespolitical violence and is a