Addressing his 12th Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton bashed Donald Trump as self-obsessed and vengeful.
“He mostly talks about himself, right?” Clinton said, during a nearly 30-minute speech in Chicago. “The next time you hear him, don’t count the lies, count the I’s.”
Clinton has spoken at DNC conventions for the past four decades — including one eight years ago when his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, accepted the nomination to face Trump.
Noticeably slower and shakier after dealing with health issues in recent years, Clinton still ad-libbed remarks and mostly read from a paper in front of him, not a teleprompter.
“His vendettas, his vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies. He’s like one of those tenors, opening before he walks about on stage … trying to get his lungs open by singing, ‘Me, me, me, me.’ When Kamala Harris is president, every day will begin with, ‘You, you, you, you,’” said Clinton, who added that Harris would govern as “the president of joy.”
Clinton also swiped at Trump’s age. “Two days ago, I turned 78, the oldest man in my family for four generations,” Clinton said. “And the only personal vanity I want to assert is I’m still younger than Donald Trump,” who turned 78 in June.
“What are they supposed to make of these endless tributes to the late, great Hannibal Lecter?” Clinton said, wondering what foreign leaders must think of Trump’s fixation on the fictional cannibal serial killer from “Silence of the Lambs.”
Clinton praised his predecessor, Joe Biden, drawing another contrast with Republicans, who never mention the only other living former GOP president, George W. Bush. Democrats, meanwhile, have embraced Barack Obama and Clinton, whose legacy came under renewed scrutiny amid the 2018 #MeToo movement.
″[Biden] had an improbable turn that made him president, and we were in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crash. He healed our sick and put the rest of us back to work. He strengthened our alliances for peace and security. He stood up for Ukraine. He’s trying desperately to get a ceasefire in the Middle East,” Clinton said.
“And then he did something that’s really hard for a politician to do — he voluntarily gave up political power.”