Clinton: Trump ‘bragged’ about not paying taxes

RALEIGH, N.C. — Hillary Clinton ripped into Donald Trump at her first rally since Monday’s presidential debate for saying that not paying federal income tax in previous years makes him “smart.”

“He actually bragged about gaming the system to get out of paying his fair share of taxes,” Clinton told the crowd of roughly 1,500 at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh.

At the beginning of her half-hour speech, a supporter yelled, “We’re proud of you!,” and a beaming Clinton replied, “Thank you.”

“I think there’s a strong possibility he hasn’t paid federal taxes a lot of years, and this is a man who goes around calling our military a disaster, who goes around criticizing every institution from health care to education, our vets,” Clinton said. “And he probably hasn’t paid a penny to support our troops or our vets or our schools or our health care.”

During the debate, Clinton brought up that the last tax returns Trump turned over to the public — from the 1970s — show that he paid nothing in federal income tax for several years. He interjected, “That makes me smart.”

“If not paying taxes makes him smart, what does that make the rest of us?” Clinton asked the crowd. “I’ve got to tell you, Bill and I have been blessed. We didn’t come from millionaire families.”

She sketched out her and her husband’s middle-class backgrounds and said their tax returns show they’ve paid the highest marginal rate on the federal income tax while also donating around 10 percent of their income to charity.

Clinton, a millionaire herself, has attempted to paint Trump as an out-of-touch plutocrat who does not care about working people. During the debate, she skewered him for his business pattern of not paying some contractors for their work.

The former secretary of state also blasted Trump’s preparation for their first head-to-head matchup.

“He made very clear that he didn’t prepare for that debate,” Clinton said, adding that he was “dangerously incoherent” at times.

The Clinton campaign appeared to be in full victory lap mode a day after the debate that many Democrats were nervous about. Clinton was not asked about her foundation and handily dispatched a brief question about her use of a private email server. Meanwhile, Trump was on the defensive for much of the night on issues like his tax returns and his longtime support for a conspiracy theory about President Obama’s birth certificate. Trump at times wandered in his responses, digressing into a story about how his son is good at computers when talking about the Islamic State group.

Speaking to her press corps before the rally, Clinton poked fun at Trump for complaining that his mic was “defective” during the debate, saying anyone complaining about a microphone “is not having a good night.” Her campaign chair, John Podesta, said Trump was “thrown off” and dug himself in deeper with his tax return comments.

For his part, Trump told supporters in Miami that he thinks “we did very well” and that the debate was “definitely big league.”