WASHINGTON _ As Republicans opened their national convention in Cleveland on Monday, Hillary Clinton wasted no time launching into counterprogramming, taunting Donald Trump at a nearby address before the NAACP and offering a vision for confronting the recent spate of violence in American communities starkly different than his.
Clinton mocked Trump for declining to appear before the group, and she told the audience that the first time her publicity friendly opponent spoke to the press was in 1973, when one of his companies was accused of discriminating against black people seeking to rent apartments.
"We have heard a lot of troubling things from Donald Trump, but that one is shocking," Clinton said.
The speech at the NAACP annual conference in Cincinnati came as both Clinton and Trump find their campaigns overshadowed by the shooting deaths of three police officers in Baton Rogue, La., over the weekend, the latest incident in an epidemic of violence that has claimed the lives of multiple police officers, as well as black civilians who were killed by police.
As Trump positions himself as the "law and order" candidate whose answer to the violence is cracking down on lawbreakers with little patience for movements such as Black Lives Matter, Clinton warns that the problems can only be solved by rooting out racism from the criminal justice system. She is also pushing for new gun control laws.
"Let's admit it," Clinton said. "There is clear evidence that African-Americans are disproportionately killed in police incidents compared to any other group. ... Something is profoundly wrong. We can't ignore that. We can't wish it away. We have to make it right."
Clinton used the NAACP platform to tear into Trump's record on issues of equality, saying he demeaned the first black president by accusing him of not being an American citizen, has played "coy with white supremacists," showed disrespect for women, and wanted to "ban an entire religion" with his plan to block Muslims from entering the country. (He appeared to walk back that plan Sunday night on "60 Minutes.")
"At times like these, we need a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart," Clinton said. "I will work every single day to do just that. The Republican nominee for president will do the exact opposite. He might say otherwise if he were here, but of course he declined your invitation. So all we can go on is what he has said and done in the past."
