Seth Richardson

Reno Gazette-Journal

RENO, Nev. — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave one of her strongest rebukes against Republican opponent Donald Trump on Thursday, criticizing him for embracing radical elements of the right and basing his campaign on racism and paranoia.

Her speech in Reno marked Clinton’s most aggressive attack on Trump since the Democratic National Convention, as she called Trump a bigot and a subscriber to conspiracy theories, blaming him for allowing the radical right to take over the mainstream of the Republican Party.

“From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,” she said. “He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.”

Trump responds to Clinton attacks: 'Shame on you'

Trump has made varying claims that critics have said are racially offensive during his campaign.

Clinton pointed to Trump’s non-denouncement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, retweets of white supremacists and anti-Semites and his leadership of the birther movement — a conspiracy theory-laden attempt to prove President Obama was not born in the United States — as proof-positive of racism.

“The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors,” she said. “Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.”

Recently, Trump announced Stephen Bannon, former executive chairman of the online news site Breitbart, as his campaign CEO, another issue Clinton pointed to as an example of Trump embracing and legitimizing fringe elements within the GOP.

Clinton also gave praise to former Republican nominees Bob Dole and John McCain as well as President George W. Bush for quashing fringe elements within the party.

“We need leadership like that again,” she said.

In the past couple of weeks, Trump has sought to soften his image with minority communities, making explicit gestures to African Americans in particular. At the same time, he hired Bannon, whose site has become a voice for the loosely affiliated activist groups that identify with the so-called alt-right.

Clinton has been the subject of her own controversies in recent weeks, particularly after the release of additional emails from her time at the State Department that raised questions about its relationship with the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary of State. The Trump campaign said Clinton was trying to spin the narrative of the election after a terrible few weeks.

Clinton camp pushes back at Clinton Foundation reports

Trump calls Clinton a 'bigot' in appeal to African-American voters

“Hillary Clinton’s attempt to delete the single worst week of her political career isn’t going to work. Her admission that there's a lot of smoke but no fire is a complete lie, and the American public’s response will be to do exactly as her campaign suggests: don’t vote for her,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said.

Trump tweeted after Clinton's remarks that the Democratic presidential nominee was the one who was "fear-mongering" and that she was "pandering to the worst instincts in our society."

"She should be ashamed of herself!" Trump wrote.

In her Nevada remarks Thursday, Clinton cast Trump as "a man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet."

Saying "there's always been a paranoid fringe in our politics," Clinton argued that “it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone."

"Until now," she said.

Contributing: Heidi Przybyla and Cooper Allen, USA TODAY, reporting from Washington