Al Smith V: Trump 'crossed the line and took it a little too far' at Catholic roast

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner got “a little uncomfortable” Thursday evening, Alfred E. Smith V said Friday.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both addressed the crowd at the annual roast and Catholic fundraiser, though the Republican presidential nominee was repeatedly booed for crossing the line.


At one point, Trump remarked that here Clinton “is tonight in public pretending not to hate Catholics,” perhaps drawing his loudest jeers of the night.

“The room did get a little uncomfortable, yeah,” Smith said Friday during an interview on CNN’s “New Day.” “Like I said, you know, that line in a room full of predominantly Catholics, that didn’t go over very well.”

Trump was attempting to seize on information revealed from a trove of hacked emails WikiLeaks has released from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal account.

In one exchange, Jennifer Palmieri, now Clinton’s communications director, wrote that wealthy people find conservatism more acceptable from Catholics than evangelicals.

In response to an email from Center for American Progress fellow John Halpin, who had accused prominent Catholic conservatives of “an amazing bastardization of the [Catholic] faith,” Palmieri said she imagines “they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

Ahead of the dinner, Cardinal Timothy Dolan had asked Clinton to apologize for rhetoric he called “extraordinarily patronizing and insulting to Catholics.”

Thursday’s debate in some ways, Smith added, was like a replay of Wednesday’s debate.

“I think what we saw in the last debate a couple nights ago, we saw last night,” he said. “You know, Donald had some very solid minutes early on and eventually he crossed the line and took it a little too far. Hillary, you know, on the other hand, was able to laugh at herself and at the same time not underplay any of the serious things that Donald Trump has said or done.”

Smith said some of Trump’s jokes changed the tone of the dinner and made it more difficult for Clinton, who spoke after him. “When ultimately she got the mic, she had some very funny things that she had said, and I don’t think they got as many laughs as they could have just because the tone in the room had shifted a bit,” he said.

Smith, a board member on the foundation, also praised his father and Dolan for taking “the energy from this campaign and even some of the acrimony, actually, and point[ing] it into a positive direction to raise money for some of the neediest children in New York City,” which he said “is just remarkable.”

“No matter what you have to say about either candidate, something good did come from the dinner, as well as this campaign, even at the very end,” he said.

The dinner raised more than $6 million. “I’ve been to a lot of the dinners in my life, and this was one for the record books, I would have to say,” he added. “Absolutely.”