New York: Donald Trump went on a blistering offensive against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, calling her disqualified to run for president and savaging her record on trade, foreign policy, human rights and immigration.
The billionaire Republican candidate for president, who has denounced Clinton's US $42 million war chest as "blood money," sharpened his attacks on the polarising Democratic nominee after disastrous headlines have fuelled speculation that his controversial campaign is unravelling.
"Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency," he said in a speech at Trump SoHo, his five-star hotel in Manhattan to shouts of "Trump, Trump, Trump" from supporters. He said the stakes in the November general election could not be higher, presenting himself as an innovative thinker who could get things done and protect voters from an economic and political system rigged against them by career politicians, Clinton included.
Trump attacked Clinton as a "world-class liar" who had "perfected the politics of personal profit and theft" and lacked the judgment to be America's first woman commander-in-chief. "She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund -- doing favours for repressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash," he alleged of her tenure as America's top diplomat.
He alleged that her "disgraceful" foreign policy had cost America "thousands of lives and trillions and trillions of dollars" in reference to her support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
"In just four years, secretary Clinton managed to almost single-handedly destabilise the entire Middle East," he added, calling the Islamic State extremist group a threat because of her decisions. On economics, he assaulted her support for trade deals, saying they had wrought "total devastation" for working Americans and cost the country nearly a third of its manufacturing jobs.
America's trade deficit with China had soared by 40 percent while she was secretary of state, he said: "Hillary Clinton gave China millions of jobs and in exchange Hillary Clinton got rich."
Trump claimed that Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had made $153 million in speeches to lobbyists, foreign governments and CEOs since 2001 and castigated her for refusing to release the transcripts of her closed-door speeches to Wall Street. He also claimed that her family's Clinton Foundation had taken millions from countries in the Middle East that abuse women and members of the LGBT community.
