Trump camp: Clinton 'has truly never been vetted before'

By Nick Gass
05/04/16 12:21 PM EDT

Donald Trump’s campaign offered a glimpse of its line of attack against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, questioning the former secretary of state’s qualifications and background.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, national spokeswoman Katrina Pierson faced questions about her candidate’s enthusiasm for facing Clinton in the general election, particularly given a poll of Utah voters conducted in March that showed Clinton with a slight lead in the deep red state.

Is Trump really happy? Hall asked.

“Oh, absolutely. Mainly because Hillary Clinton has never been truly vetted before,” Pierson said. “Particularly by the media.”

Hall pressed back, as Pierson repeated, “Never been truly vetted before.”

“How many times has Hillary Clinton been asked about the specific role in Benghazi outside of the testimony?” Pierson asked.

Asked whether she truly believed that the former secretary of state and first lady had not been exposed to proper levels of public scrutiny after millions of dollars have been spent against the Clintons over her decades in public life, including her time as a senator to whose campaigns Trump donated, Pierson suggested part of the reason is exposing young voters to old information.

“There’s an entire generation of voters out there that know nothing about Hillary Clinton other than what they have heard in the last two to three years,” Pierson said. “There is plenty of information that needs to be discussed on top of the Clinton Foundation, which has not been fully discussed in the media.”

As far as whether Trump is being vetted, Pierson said that is happening now and that “he’s only been a politician for the last 10 to 11 months.”

“This is going to be a clear contrast in vision, in philosophy for the future of the American people,” she said. “And I’m sorry, Tamron, but the average person, even women, they’re not OK with ISIS-infiltrated Syrian refugees posting up in their neighborhoods. They’re not OK with pushing away the American dream for their children to illegal aliens. They are not OK with their Social Security benefits going to people who should not be in this country. There will be a contrast and those numbers will go down for Donald Trump.”

Clinton’s campaign strongly disputed Pierson on all counts.

“Well, Hillary Clinton has committed a lifetime of work in the public arena to advancing the causes that we’ve talked about throughout this primary campaign,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon told MSNBC. “In the course of that, she’s been receiving all kinds of vitriolic attacks from Republican for the better part of two decades, so she is the ultimate tested candidate. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a risk that we just can’t afford with the high stakes that we’re seeing right now in the country today.”

Fallon referred to Clinton’s longstanding opposition to Trump's candidacy. Trump, he said, will respond by “throwing the kitchen sink at her.”

“It’s not going to work. I think what worked in a Republican primary election motivating and galvanizing those Republican primary voters will not work in a general,” Fallon said. “It will turn people off.”