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Hillary Clinton carefully waded into the controversy engulfing Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, telling reporters on Tuesday that an episode in which Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed a reporter was part of a broader campaign that had been “inciting violent behavior and aggressive behavior.”

Mr. Lewandowski was charged with battery Tuesday by the police in Jupiter, Fla., who said he had grabbed a reporter as she tried to ask the candidate a question earlier this month.

“I think that every candidate has to be responsible for what happens in their campaign,” Mrs. Clinton said, “and, as I’ve said repeatedly, what Donald Trump has been doing these last months is inciting violent behavior and aggressive behavior that I think is very dangerous and has resulted in attacks on people at his events and this charge that was brought against his campaign manager,” Mrs. Clinton said during a stop at a brewery in La Crosse, Wis.

She did not comment specifically on whether Mr. Trump should fire Mr. Lewandowski, saying, “I’m not going to comment on a pending legal or criminal case, but I think that ultimately the responsibility is Mr. Trump’s.”

Asked whether she would fire her own campaign manager in a similar situation, Mrs. Clinton said: “I’m not going to comment on this particular case. The charge has been made and they deserve to have their cases heard. I’m making a larger point that the entire campaign has been played to our worst instincts, has set people against each other, and I don’t think that has any place in presidential politics or any politics.”

On Monday, in a speech about the Supreme Court, Mrs. Clinton called out Mr. Trump for pushing for President Obama’s birth certificate and blamed congressional Republicans for fueling his rise to front-runner of the party.

Mrs. Clinton’s allies have blissfully watched as Mr. Trump’s comments alienate female voters, who will be a critical force in the fall.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton praised Michelle Fields, the former Breitbart News reporter who brought the charges against Mr. Lewandowski, saying that she “deserves a lot of credit for following through on the way she was physically handled at an event, and I think the charges being brought today certainly suggest that the authorities thought that her story was credible.”

Mr. Trump has defended his campaign manager, writing on Twitter that Mr. Lewandowski is “a very decent man” and “look at the tapes — nothing there!”

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