Haillary Clinton, Donald Trump trade fire with 'fraud' and 'liar' charges

WASHINGTON: The US presidential election polemics, already testy, exploded into invective and name-calling on Thursday with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton launching fierce broadsides as they headed into the largest state, California, which will hold primaries on June 7.

In a speech she is scheduled to deliver in San Diego, excerpts of which were leaked, Clinton is all set to unload on the billionaire real estate tycoon. She gave a brief preview of it on Wednesday , calling Trump a "fraud" who would "scam America the way he scammed all of those people at Trump University" -referring to the real estate tycoon's business training programme that is at the center of an ongoing lawsuit.

"Trump University employed instructors with no experience and lied to sell outrageously expensive packages. In a word: fraud," she tweeted on Wednesday, alleging that "Trump and his firm took advantage of vulnerable Americans, encouraging them to max out their credit cards, empty retirement savings, destroy their financial futures -all while making promises they knew were false from the beginning." Trump in turn launched into a withering preemptive attack on Clinton, saying she has "no natural talent" and was "one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of our country."

"All you have to do is watch her speak. And you ever notice, even for a minor speech she has teleprompters. Do I have teleprompters here?" he boasted in a typical, rambling, off-the-cuff speech to his supporters in California, where the presidential election circus moves to this weekend.

"Honestly, I tell you what folks, she doesn't know what the hell she's doing. It's going to be another four years of disaster. We're probably better off with Bernie," he said, after having repeatedly mocked Clinton for not sealing up the nomination to run for president like he has.

Trump also returned Clinton's charge that he was a fraud by suggesting the Democratic frontrunner and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had a quid pro quo with China, drawing a foreign country into the charges and countercharges that are taking the presidential elections into previously uncharted territory.

"At the same time secretary Clinton was surrendering our jobs to China, the Chinese government and its supporters were funneling huge sums, I mean huge sums of money to Bill Clinton so that he'd give speeches. So she's given China all these deals and China's paying him vast amounts of money to make speeches? Great job," he sneered.

He also ridiculed her for claiming she would be ready to take 3am emergency phone calls as a President.

"Remember the famous phone call? At three o'clock in the morning she'll answer the call. Guess what? She was sleeping. She was sleeping like a baby. 'Don't wake me up.' Of course she took the calls from her slimy friends but she didn't take 5-600 calls."