The Slatest

Clinton Joins Every Other Presidential Candidate in Denouncing “Rigged” Systems

Hillary Clinton in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Wednesday.

Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

The idea that the U.S. economy is “rigged” against middle- and working-class individuals was one of the central themes of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Too-big-to-fail banks and a corrupt campaign finance system are allowing wealthy Americans to tilt our economic system in their own favor, Sanders argued repeatedly.

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has also complained about rigging of late. Trump says that Hillary Clinton is corrupt and that the FBI is complicit in covering up her corruption; the system is “rigged” to protect her.

(I don’t know what “murder” he’s talking about.)

Hillary Clinton hasn’t tended to say the word “rigged.” She didn’t use it in a high-profile recent speech about Donald Trump and the economy that she gave in North Carolina; she only said it twice in the course of nine Democratic debates, and both of those times were in reference to Sanders having said it first. (Sanders dropped at least one “rigged” in eight of the debates.) But Wednesday, Clinton spoke in Atlantic City, New Jersey, about Donald Trump’s history of scams and bankruptcies, and guess which word that starts with “r” and appeals to a discontented electorate’s sense that major institutions have failed them happened to come up? Via an MSNBC transcript:

Screenshot/SnapStream. Illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker.

(Here’s what Clinton said: “[Trump] convinced other people that his Atlantic City properties were a great investment so they would put in their own hard-earned money, but he always rigged it so he got paid no matter how his companies performed.” As it happens, when I was searching for this line, I found that a Trump surrogate had been on MSNBC complaining about the “rigged corrupt system that benefits the insiders who always have special privileges” four minutes before Clinton started speaking.)

Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, meanwhile, asserted in May that the electoral system itself is “a rigged game.” Green Party nominee Jill Stein? You guessed it:

At this point, if you work in the rigging industry or just want to vote for someone who just enjoys a good rig from time to time, it would seem that this election is, well, let’s say stacked against you.

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.