CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Speaking to thousands of veterans here, Donald Trump railed at Hillary Clinton on Tuesday as incompetent and dangerous for the military and the nation's security.
"The other candidate in this race, you know her name _ crooked Hillary Clinton. And believe me, folks, she is crooked," Trump said, and the crowd at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention roared with approval. "She recently said of the VA scandal that it's not as widespread as it's been reported to be. It's like she's trying to sweep it under the rug, which, by the way, politicians have done for years and years and years. It's going to be four more years of the same if she ever got in, but that's not going to happen."
"We know how she takes care of the veterans _ just look at her invasion of Libya, at her handling of Benghazi, a disaster," Trump said. "Or look at her emails, which put America's entire national security at risk."
The crowd responded by chanting, "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
Clinton had addressed the gathering the previous day. Several members of the audience said the response to the presumptive Democratic nominee was muted compared to the raucous cheers and standing ovations Trump received.
Many are still smarting over Clinton's remarks in 2015 that while the wait times and delays at the Veterans Administration did exist, the problem was not as widespread as media accounts portrayed, and that Republicans were using the scandal to try to privatize the VA.
On Monday, Clinton told the gathering that she was "outraged" by the delays, which she called "inexcusable." She said the Department of Veteran Affairs must be reformed, but not privatized.
"She just said she wouldn't privatize the VA. Well, that doesn't tell us anything. What are you going to do to fix it?" asked Blackhawk Fornelli, 65, of Webster, N.C., a veteran who served in Vietnam and Desert Storm. "I get treated by the vets, and sometimes it's 90 days."
