BEND, OR -- President Bill Clinton delivered a passionate speech Thursday at Central Oregon Community College. About a thousand people packed into the Coats Campus Center to hear his speech in support of his wife and Democratic Presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. Some hoping to hear the former President were turned away due to the crowds.
He told supporters she is well equipped to handle the country's challenges. "All these countries that the United States helped to liberate in the long Cold War are deciding that maybe Democracy is too much trouble. They just want a strong leader in the mold of Mr. Putin and keep the foreigners out. Britain’s thinking about withdrawing from the EU. All these things could effect us. You cannot afford to have a President go in there who does not have the confidence of world leaders, the trust of world leaders, and who understands how to keep big bad things from happening and make good thing happen. We cannot afford it."
Clinton promised Hillary would restore the dwindling middle class. "The great task today, is to create a shared prosperity; that is shared, not only among all Americans, but with the future, that is sustainable. To do it, we have to raise middle class incomes, restore upward mobility for everybody and put the pedal to the metal on the things that will work for us in the future."
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During his hour-long speech, he tried to explain why his wife would make a better President than Republican rival Donald Trump. "This has been a rather interesting year, wouldn’t you say? I do believe that love trumps hate; I do believe that. But, I think it’s important to understand why there’s been so much intensity in both primaries and so much true believing and ‘we got to throw all the system out.’ It’s because, in 400 years, not a single country has fully recovered from a crash as severe as the one we endured, in less than 10 years."
At one point, Clinton stopped his speech when he noticed a man in the front row had fainted. The audience member regained consciousness and was fine. Following the Bend appearance, Clinton traveled to Portland for a couple of speeches.
