In major speech as presidential candidate at Trump hotel, senator says president ‘tearing apart the moral fabric of our country’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand used a speech in front of a Trump hotel in New York on Sunday to call the president a “coward” who “punches down” and is “tearing apart the moral fabric of our country”.

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The New York senator said more about Trump as she stood in front of one of his signature properties, the Trump International Hotel & Tower at the south-west corner of Central Park.

In what her campaign called Gillibrand’s first major speech as a presidential candidate, the senator said the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Manhattan was “a shrine to greed, division and vanity”.

Gillibrand is trying to position herself in a crowded field. While some hopefuls have shied away from mentioning Trump, Gillibrand has not hesitated to do so.

“He demonizes the vulnerable and he punches down. He puts his name in bold on every building,” Gillibrand said. “He does all of this because he wants you to believe he is strong. He is not. Our president is a coward.”

Gillibrand spoke as the nation awaited the key findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The attorney general, William Barr, was preparing to release the “principal findings” to Congress on Sunday.

Gillibrand has said Mueller’s report should be made public quickly and that it was clear Trump has undermined American democracy.

Her speech appeared to be a relaunch of her campaign. She announced in January that she was exploring a run, then spent months campaigning and raising money.

Gillibrand praised the bravery of high school students organizing to end gun violence, young people brought to the country illegally as children who are fighting for “their right to call this country home”, and “of course, the formerly well-behaved women who organized, ran for office, voted and won in 2018”.

“That is brave,” she said.

Gillibrand also talked about her own courage. She said that was evidenced by her ability to win a House seat in a district seen as a Republican stronghold; by fighting for funds to cover the cost of medical care for rescue workers and survivors of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center; and by fighting on behalf of survivors of sexual assault and harassment at the Pentagon, in Congress and on college campuses.