Hillary Clinton, top surrogates crank up heat against surging Donald Trump

With her poll lead fading, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign Sunday tried to fend off a surging Donald Trump by accusing the businessman of inciting violence on the campaign trail and stoking debunked claims that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.

Mrs. Clinton’s top surrogates — including President Obama, who told black voters over the weekend that it would be a “personal insult” to him if they didn’t turn out for his former secretary of state — pulled no punches against Mr. Trump.

The Republican presidential nominee has turned around his once-struggling campaign and is now tied with his Democratic opponent in several key battleground states. National polls also show the White House race is neck and neck with seven weeks to go until Election Day.

Trying to stop Mr. Trump’s rise, Mrs. Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, launched an all-out assault during appearances on several Sunday political talk shows, declaring that the Republican nominee is encouraging his supporters to engage in violence.

“He is using language that is an incitement to violence or an encouragement of violence, or at least being cavalier and reckless about violence. And that has no place in any election,” he said. “When you look at a series of these comments he’s making, I do believe it is an incitement or at a minimum an expression of indifference whether violence would occur.”

Mr. Trump on Friday said Mrs. Clinton would be much more supportive of Second Amendment rights if she didn’t have armed bodyguards protecting her at all times. He said, “Let’s see what happens to her” if the bodyguards were no longer in place.

Mr. Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, called Mr. Kaine’s assertion “absolute nonsense,” and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a top Trump surrogate, called on Mr. Kaine to apologize.

At the same time, the Clinton campaign is struggling to move past evidence that Democrats, not Mr. Trump, were responsible for fueling speculation in 2008 that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya. Mr. Trump made the charge Friday that the Clinton operation bears responsibility and conceded that the president was, in fact, a natural-born American citizen.

Since then, reports have emerged that the Clinton campaign played a role in bringing the issue into the national political discourse. Former Clinton campaign officials acknowledged that an Iowa volunteer circulated emails perpetuating the now-debunked story. The volunteer was quickly fired.

In addition, former McClatchy Washington bureau chief James Asher tweeted Friday that longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal personally told him that the president was born in Kenya. Mr. Blumenthal has denied making such a claim, but the Trump campaign has pounced on the revelations.

“This started with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, No. 1,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “No. 2, it was Donald Trump who put the issue to rest when he got President Obama to release his birth certificate years later. And No. 3, he said that ’President Obama was born in this country, period.’”

The Clinton campaign has tried to turn fire back on Mr. Trump for the “birther” controversy. Mrs. Clinton on Friday said her opponent is guilty of pushing a racist conspiracy, and Mr. Kaine said the Republican’s actions have been hurtful to blacks.

“For five years, when Donald Trump has pushed this bigoted lie that the African-American president of the United States is not a U.S. citizen, so many people connect that to the most painful time in American history where having African-American descent barred you from having citizenship in this country,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

With the birther issue as a backdrop, Mr. Obama over the weekend appealed to black voters to turn out for Mrs. Clinton just as they did for him in 2008 and 2012.

“If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter, that it doesn’t matter who we elect — read up on your history. It matters,” he said during a speech at the annual Congressional Black Caucus gala Saturday night. “I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good send-off? Go vote.”

High black turnout will be critical for Mrs. Clinton, especially now that polls show her lead, which cracked double digits just a few weeks ago, has evaporated.

The latest Real Clear Politics average of all polls gives Mrs. Clinton a lead of under 1 percentage point. Several polls show Mr. Trump ahead, including an LA Times/USC survey that gave the Republican a stunning 7-point advantage.

A CBS News survey of voters in 13 battleground states — including Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Colorado and Pennsylvania — found Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton tied at 42 percent.

Republican leaders say Mr. Trump’s message has begun to resonate in those battleground states and across the country.

“This is probably one of the biggest movements as far as people across this country in modern history,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told “Face the Nation.”