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Hillary Clinton Is Taking The Fight Against Donald Trump To His Home Turf — The Internet

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 05:53 PST, May 5, 2016

Hillary Clinton is taking the fight with Donald Trump to what is essentially home field for the real estate mogul: the Internet.

The presumed Democratic Party candidate is not waiting for her prolonged primary battle with Bernie Sanders to come to an end, instead turning her full focus to Donald Trump and the general election challenges that lie ahead for her.

Clinton’s first round of direct attacks have been focused online, with a series of attack ads posted to her Twitter account using the words of Trump’s fellow Republicans against him.

“The man who seems to only feel big when he’s making other people look small,” said HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who very briefly was a vice presidential hopeful until Ted Cruz ended his campaign after the loss in Indiana.

As CNET has pointed out, the second ad is likely a preview for what will be Clinton’s line of attack against Trump, using his own words against him.

“The second ad offers glimpses of Trump’s world view.

“His need to deport Mexicans is juxtaposed against his vow to keep all Muslims out of the United States. Indeed, so many of his more colorful — and, in some ways black-and-white — statements are featured in all their regal glory.

“These are, of course, only the first skirmishes.”

Though there may be nothing particularly remarkable about the ads themselves, as they are standard political ads, CNET noted that it’s interesting to see Hillary Clinton choose the Internet as a battleground. Trump has a huge following online, with his Twitter feed becoming a major outlet for him to connect with his constituents and blast opponents.

“If there’s one thing that seems certain, it’s that social media will become the first port of name-calling for both candidates,” the report noted.

Hillary Clinton has already taken great efforts to sway voters on the Internet. Because her core constituents tend to skew a bit older, Clinton doesn’t have the same fervent Internet presence as her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders. Last month, she announced that she was putting $1 million into a campaign to “push back” against online trolls slamming her record.

The funding came from a pro-Clinton Super PAC called Correct the Record, a spin-off from the American Bridge SuperPAC run by Clinton supporter David Brock. The money is reportedly used to debunk conservative lines of attack, but some Reddit users claimed it was turning into a campaign of harassment.

“This explains why my inbox turned to cancer on Tuesday,” wrote user OKarizee. “Been a member of reddit for almost 4 years and never experienced anything like it. In fact, in all my years on the internet I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

The effort has drawn other criticism, including some who claim the Super PAC is exploiting loopholes to coordinate directly with Clinton’s campaign.

https://twitter.com/KasiaMikurda/status/726185249919504385

“Campaign finance lawyers are not that impressed with [CTR’s] logic, but they can get away with it because the [Federal Election Commission] is deadlocked and does nothing,” the Sunlight Foundation’s Libby Watson told The Daily Beast.

But, Hillary Clinton has been mostly undaunted by the criticism, and her attacks against Trump this week show that she plans to continue an aggressive push to win the battle of the Internet. Whether that will actually work against Trump and his well-honed strategy of attacking opponents 140 characters at a time remains to be seen.

[Photo by Matt Rourke/AP Images]

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