Hillary Clinton quotes Hamilton, slams Trump in rousing DNC speech
The story of tonight was Hillary Clinton, who slammed her Republican opponent Donald Trump as “a little man” during an acceptance speech that also saw the Democratic nominee quote the smash Broadway musical Hamilton.
“Though ‘we may not live to see the glory,’ as the song from the musical Hamilton goes, ‘let us gladly join the fight,'” said Clinton toward the end of her speech Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. “Let our legacy be about planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. That’s why we’re here — not just in this hall, but on this earth.”
The Internet exploded soon after the reference, with many observers making their own Hamilton references. The show’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda weighed in with a series of emojis. “I’m with her,” he wrote, adding the hashtag #AndShesBeenListeningToDiscTwo.
RELATED: Celebrities Who Love Hamilton
During her wide-ranging speech, which called for unity while touching on topics of immigration, healthcare, education, and the economy, the former First Lady, Secretary of State, and New York senator pulled no punches against Trump, whom she said “can’t even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.”
“He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he’s gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he’s challenged in a debate. When he sees a protestor at a rally,” Clinton said. “Imagine, if you dare, imagine, imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
She criticized Trump’s temperament by referencing Jackie Kennedy’s letter to Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev following the Cuban Missile Crisis. “I can’t put it any better,” said Clinton. “She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.”
Clinton blasted Trump for his remarks at last week’s Republican National Convention in Ohio, where he said, “No one knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
“Really? ‘I alone can fix it’? Isn’t he forgetting?” Clinton said. “Troops on the front lines. Police officers and firefighters who run toward danger. Doctors and nurses who care for us. Teachers who change lives. Entrepreneurs who see possibilities in every problem. Mothers who lost children to violence and are building a movement to keep other kids safe. He’s forgetting every last one of us. Americans don’t say, ‘I alone can fix it.’ We say, ‘We’ll fix it together.’ … None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone.”
She also called Trump a “bully” and denounced his comments on women, Mexicans, and people with disabilities, saying he “wants to divide us from the rest of the world, and from each other.”
“He’s betting that the perils of today’s world will blind us to its unlimited promise,” she said. “He wants us to fear the future and fear each other. Well, you know, a great Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than 80 years ago, during a much more perilous time: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ Now we are clear-eyed about what our country is up against. But we are not afraid.”
See Clinton’s full speech, in which the Democratic nominee opens up about her upbringing, touts her accomplishments, and delves into her plans for economic, education, and immigration reform, in the video above.
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