Donald Trump's campaign's rapid-response staffers kicked into full swing, blasting Hillary Clinton before her speech. | AP Photo Trump boots up rapid-response operation

After more than a year as a candidate and more than a month as a presumptive nominee, Donald Trump has finally launched a rapid-response operation.

Before Hillary Clinton had even taken the stage in Columbus, Ohio, to take down Trump’s economic proposals, the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign had already begun flooding the zone with a series of Facebook and Instagram posts, tweets and emails.


A Trump campaign aide with knowledge of the plans told POLITICO that the rapid-response effort is a "small team, but it's growing" and is "actually only going to be growing from here."

"This is Mr. Trump's vision and Mr. Trump's directive being executed," the official said, adding that the team will respond in real time through TV interviews, press releases, emails and social media.

Going forward, the campaign official said Trump's messages would target Clinton's policies to make the case that she is beholden to Wall Street interests, foreign governments and corporations — an argument frequently visited in the campaign's multiple coordinated messages Tuesday and all but assured to be the main subject of his Wednesday morning speech at Trump SoHo.

"This represents the beginning of a dramatic engagement of the American" public on those issues, the Trump official said.

Shortly before noon Eastern time on Tuesday, Trump’s campaign blasted out an email ripping into a Moody’s Analytics analysis used by Clinton to slam him by attempting to undercut the report at its source and principal author, Mark Zandi. Pointing to Zandi’s donations to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Trump’s campaign shared a list of the donations. It also shared a Fortune magazine article from last July in which Moody’s admitted miscalculating its ratings of subprime mortgages, leading to last decade’s recession. Clinton, meanwhile, noted that Zandi was an adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, to support her argument that criticism of Trump has crossed the aisle.

A member of Clinton's rapid response team mocked the email pointing out Zandi’s associations.

lololol to a report that came out 24 hours ago (icymi: Trump’s plan kills 3.5M jobs https://t.co/yTkTEqHzWk) https://t.co/rTFtdIFWLC — Gwen Rocco (@gwenrocco) June 21, 2016

"Hillary says this election is about judgment. She's right. Her judgement has killed thousands, unleashed ISIS and wrecked the economy," Trump tweeted, the first of several messages on Twitter posted during and after her address.

Clinton assailed Trump's past statements on debt, while Trump pointed to his experience as a badge of honor. "I am 'the king of debt.' That has been great for me as a businessman, but is bad for the country. I made a fortune off of debt, will fix U.S.," he wrote.

“Hillary Clinton’s only right about one thing: I understand debt and how to handle it," Trump said in a video posted to Facebook and Instagram. "I’ve made a fortune with debt. But debt with this country has been a disaster, and Obama has piled it on, and she’s been there watching.”

Trump’s subsequent emails sought to tie Clinton ever closer to President Barack Obama, featuring a slew of economic figures from U.S. government bureaus showing decreases in median household income and home ownership rates and increases in the number of Americans in poverty, on food stamps and in debt under the current administration, of which the former secretary of state was a part for the first four years.

The next email ripped into Clinton for her advocacy of the Iranian nuclear deal, mentioning Boeing’s agreement Tuesday to sell aircraft to IranAir, the Islamic republic’s largest airline. “Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, would not have been allowed to enter into these negotiations with Boeing without Clinton’s disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal,” the campaign said.

As Clinton’s speech got underway, Trump’s team touted the Republican’s economic proposals by sharing various components that earned praise during the campaign.

Then things got personal.

“While Clinton claims that Mr. Trump does not have the temperament to be President, she ignores her own lack of poise under pressure,” the Trump campaign’s email read, referring to a book by former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne, which it said “reports on the countless examples of Clinton not having the composure to handle the rigors of the Oval Office.”

The next message claimed Clinton contributed to the loss of more than one-quarter of American manufacturing jobs from 1993 — her husband Bill Clinton’s first year in office — through the North American Free Trade Agreement and normalizing trade relations with China.

Continuing with Bill Clinton, the campaign next sent a message alleging that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton “laundered money” to her husband through the for-profit company Laureate Education.

“This is yet another example of how Clinton treated the State Department as her own personal hedge fund, and sold out the American public to fund her lavish lifestyle,” the message said. “Laureate made money by racking up student debt on vulnerable students.”

And rather than shying away from the thorny issue of his own for-profit Trump University and surrounding litigation, Trump’s campaign projected pride, stating, “By contrast, Mr. Trump has created an incredible learning experience for students at Trump University, thousands of which gave rave reviews of the time spent learning key fundamentals of business tactics.”

While Clinton walked offstage in Ohio’s capital, Trump’s rapid-response was still going strong, blasting her policies that it said “fueled the mortgage meltdown” and are “all to boost profits for her special interest donors.”

Even after the speech, Trump’s rapid-response machine was still firing away.

“If you believe as I do, America values hard work and treats people with dignity and offering everyone the chance to live our dreams and cares for those in need, well, the formula for America’s success have always been that we are stronger together,” the Trump campaign quoted Clinton as saying in its email, before stating that “[b]ehind closed doors, Hillary Clinton uses State Department access and favors to rake in massive sums of money from some of the most oppressive regimes on planet Earth.”

“Treat People with Dignity?” the subject line asks. “Hillary Takes Millions from Regimes That Brutalize Women & LGBT Residents.”

Trump kept up the attacks on Twitter, writing, “Hillary took money and did favors for regimes that enslave women and murder gays,” before working in a reference to the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“If you want to know about Hillary Clinton’s honesty & judgment, ask the family of Ambassador Stevens,” Trump wrote, following up, “Hillary defrauded America as Secy of State. She used it as a personal hedge fund to get herself rich! Corrupt, dangerous, dishonest.”

