Clinton takes battle to UC Riverside

Democrat Hillary Clinton ripped the Republicans’ economic policies and GOP front-ruer Donald Trump’s candidacy during her speech at UC Riverside on Tuesday evening.

“Trump may have started out as entertainment, but now it’s really conceing,” she said.

She vowed to stand up to Trump, saying just because he has the bully pulpit “doesn’t mean we want a bully in the While House.”

She also praised the prosperity of the 1990s when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president.

“And then along came the Republicans again with a failed economic policy,” she said, adding that Republicans let Wall Street ruin the economy.

The former secretary of state blasted Trump’s statements on foreign policy, including suggesting that Japan and South Korea obtain nuclear weapons, as well as his call for temporarily baing Muslims from entering the United States.

“People are listening to Donald Trump and they’re wondering, what is going on in America?” she said.

Trump only cares about climate change when it affects his golf courses, she said.

If elected president, Clinton said she will work to find common ground, noting how she got GOP votes for children’s health insurance following the failure of health care reform in the 1990s.

At the same time, Clinton said she would stand her ground on abortion rights, LGBT rights and voting rights. And she said she would fight for immigration reform and tougher gun laws.

• Photos: Hillary Clinton makes UC Riverside campaign stop

She called for creating jobs through building infrastructure and clean energy projects. And she vowed to fight for equal pay for women, saying that if you have a female loved one who works, “equal pay is your issue.”

She touched on the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Beardino when she talked about how she would protect Americans. “We’re not all that far from San Beardino, are we?” Clinton asked rhetorically.

Clinton took the stage at the Johnson Family Practice Center — also known as the former physical education building — around 6:15 p.m., hours after Beie Sanders addressed a packed Riverside Municipal Auditorium.

State Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, who called her the next president of the U.S., was one of the introductory speakers.

In his speech, Roth bragged about UC Riverside’s medical school and the university’s selection as the new site of the Califoia Air Resources Board testing lab, saying, “Contrary to what people tell you, we’ve got problem-solvers here in Califoia.”

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Other pre-Clinton speakers included Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro, who praised what he described as Clinton’s long history of respecting tribal sovereignty.

The next choice for president couldn’t be more clear, Macarro said: Hillary or a reality star who filed for bankruptcy four times.

Clinton spent the start of Tuesday in Los Angeles, speaking with Rep. Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, and at an event at a union hall in Commerce.

With Riverside rallies by both Clinton and Sanders and a San Beardino rally for Sanders, only an Inland appearance by Trump could have made the day more noteworthy for area politics.

“It’s pretty crazy they both came,” said UC Riverside student Andrew Allevato, 21, of Clinton and Sanders.

The Southe Califoia push for votes continues Wednesday when Trump holds a noon rally at the Anaheim Convention Center, and Clinton and Sanders also will hold state campaign events.

While Trump is the lone Republican remaining, there’s still a battle for the Democratic nomination ahead of the state’s June 7 primary. Clinton leads Sanders by 271 pledged delegates, a lead that grows to more than 760 delegates with the addition of superdelegates — party officials and elected leaders who can support the candidate of their choice.

The math heavily favors Clinton as the Democratic nominee. But Sanders has vowed to take the fight to the Democratic National Convention in July, and he’s bastormed the state in hopes of beating Clinton in Califoia, although recent polls show her in the lead.

Clinton didn’t mention Sanders by name during her rally. But she asked for voters’ help in the primary and in November.