Hillary Clinton Ad: Donald Trump Thinks Americans Are Stupid

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump want you to believe something similar: Their opponent really doesn’t like Americans all that much.

After a video of Clinton leaked Friday showing her calling half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables,” Trump hit back Monday to demand an apology. He echoed a common criticism she had leveled at him, saying her campaign was fueled by hate.

But Clinton, who is taking time off from the campaign trail this week to rest after a pneumonia diagnosis, wasn’t ready to apologize for anything except over exaggerating. Instead, her campaign released an ad Tuesday implying Trump has a low opinion of Americans. It featured clips of Trump calling Americans stupid, mocking a reporter with disabilities and questioning whether a judge of Mexican descent could really be impartial in a case about him.

“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of this country to believe this crap?” Trump is shown saying in the ad, a message he delivered at a campaign rally in Iowa in November when retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was surging in the polls there.

The ad then shows Trump speaking Monday when he said that someone can’t lead the nation if they have “such a low opinion for its citizens.”

If either candidate does actually dislike the American public, the feeling is mutual. Neither candidate is all that popular.

An NBC News/Survey Monkey poll released over the weekend shows that both candidates have much higher unfavorable ratings than favorable ratings. On that front, they were pretty closely disliked: 59 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Clinton compared to 60 percent for Trump. As far as their favorability, 38 percent of registered voters had a positive impression of the billionaire compared to 39 percent for the former secretary of state.