IOWA CITY, Iowa — Hillary Clinton believes Donald Trump should be thrown in the doghouse for his comments on immigration. And that the rest of the Republican party should be tossed in there with him.

In her first national TV interview since she launched her campaign, the Democratic front-runner seized on the real estate mogul’s controversial comments on immigration (calling many Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals”) to shame the rest of the Republican presidential field.


“I’m very disappointed in those comments and I feel very bad and very disappointed with him and with the Republican Party for not responding immediately and saying, enough, stop it,” Clinton said to CNN after headlining an organizing meeting in a local public library.

“But they are all in the — you know, in the same general area on immigration. They don’t want to provide a path to citizenship. They range across a spectrum of being either grudgingly welcome or hostile toward immigrants.”

Clinton has already publicly bashed Trump for his comments, through not by name, after having previously accepted campaign contributions from him and even attending one of his weddings.

But on Tuesday, she played into fears the Republican establishment has about Trump dragging down the rest of the party with his inflammatory comments.

She also took aim at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been more supportive of immigration reform than his rivals.

“He doesn’t believe in a path to citizenship. If he did at one time, he no longer does,” Clinton said. “And so pretty much they’re — as I said, they’re on a spectrum of, you know, hostility, which I think is really regrettable in a nation of immigrants like ours.”

Clinton touched on the email controversy that has bogged down the early days of her campaign, as well, saying she did not violate any rules by using a private email server while serving as secretary of state.

“Let’s take a deep breath here. Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation,” she said.

And, she added, there’s an upshot — the public now gets a glimpse into her daily life, from telling aide John Podesta to wear socks, to her struggles with operating a fax machine.

“Now I think it’s kind of fun. People get a real-time behind-the-scenes look at what I was emailing about and what I was communicating about,” she said.

The interview, with Brianna Keilar, touched on a broad range of topics — from Clinton’s doppelganger on “Saturday Night Live” to her plans for an economic policy speech in Kansas City on Monday to Democratic rival and surging candidate Bernie Sanders (“I always thought this would be a competitive race.”)

Clinton also answered a question about the brouhaha around a woman possibly bumping Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill. Clinton’s not crazy about a compromise in which a woman might share the bill with Hamilton.

“That sounds pretty second class to me. So I think a woman should have her own bill,” she said.

The airing of the interview followed a full day in Iowa, during which the front-runner appeared looser-than-usual on the campaign trail.

Nearly three months into what could be the political fight of her life, Clinton noted on Tuesday that her time to ride off into the sunset is not all that far away.

“This is my last rodeo,” Clinton said during a campaign stop in the first-in-the-nation voting state on Tuesday afternoon before taking questions from reporters. Clinton said she wants to play a role in setting the country on the right path before hanging up her hat — but hopefully, she said, not until 2025, after eight years in the Oval Office.

“I believe that we can leave not just the country in good shape for the future, but we can get a deep bench of young people to decide they want to go into politics to continue the fights that we’re going to be waging,” she said.

The rodeo characterization may have been more apt than she intended. Her campaign has been criticized in recent days for using a rope to corral reporters who were following Clinton during a parade over the July 4th weekend. Greeting reporters after an organizing meeting at the Iowa City Public Library, Clinton nodded to the minicontroversy, looking at the barrier between her and the press and asking if it was the equivalent of a rope holding them back.

“I think it should come down,” she deadpanned.

She also glanced upon a range of issues in the news.

“Let’s not be afraid of the gun lobby, which does not even really represent the majority of gun owners in America,” Clinton told the crowd of more than 350 locals. While she refused to take the bait and attack Sanders when prompted, she has recently been speaking more about gun control — an issue on which she differs from Sanders, who hails from gun-friendly Vermont.

Clinton also focused on the dangers of climate change more than she usually does, calling it “one of the most existential threats to our country and our world.” And she again said that “if a Republican is elected president, that will be the end of the Affordable Care Act.”

Hillary Clinton 'disappointed' in Donald Trump

At times musing on her career as secretary of state, Clinton at one point said that she jokes with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about the difficulties of conducting diplomacy in the modern era.

But she refused to weigh in forcefully on the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, telling reporters, “I don’t think it’s useful for me to publicly comment right now on what the negotiations are attempting to resolve.

“There needs to be full transparency, disclosure and verifiable inspections going forward, and certainly any part of the Iranian nuclear or military establishment that has anything to do with the program past, present and future needs to be subject to that,” she added.

Nonetheless, the former top diplomat did call the economic situation in Greece a “tragedy,” insisting that it is important “that we can see an outcome here that will actually help Greece recover and keep them in the eurozone, and keep Europe united.”