Clinton Surrogate Tom Perez Says Trump Is a 'Train Wreck'

Former President Clinton calls for party unity.

ByABC News
May 21, 2016, 8:10 PM

— -- The Clinton campaign has made it clear that neither former President Bill Clinton nor Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton will engage in a name-calling war with Donald Trump, but that does not mean that their surrogates won't do the punching on their behalf.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a rumored potential vice presidential pick for Hillary Clinton, today introduced Bill Clinton to a crowd of 1,500 people in Southern California. During his 10-minute introduction, Perez called Trump a "train wreck for America."

The potential veep pick even speculated that a Trump administration would rename the White House.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in the first 100 days of a Trump administration the first executive action would be to rename the White House the 'Trump House,' because it's all about him," Perez said.

These attacks were crowd pleasers, with the audience loudly booing every time they heard Trump's name.

Perez made it clear that Hillary Clinton's race is now solely against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. He made no mention of her opponent in the race for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and focused his efforts on contrasting Clinton with Trump.

"The biggest difference between the candidate who will be the Republican candidate and Hillary Clinton in November is a simple two-letter word difference. One is about 'we' -- that's Hillary Clinton. And one is about 'me and me alone,' and that's Donald Trump," Perez to a loud booing from the audience.

Conversely, the former president did not mention Trump at all, but he did criticize Trump's idea for building a wall along the border with Mexico. He called for a "bridge to the future" to be built rather than a barrier.

"Do we want a wall?" he asked. "Not on your life, not unless you want to drive down the economic future of the American people and destroy the very idea of what it means to be an American."

In a rare move, the former president mentioned Sanders by name as he called for party unity. The Clinton campaign has been calling for Sanders to drop out of the presidential race for weeks.

"She needs to go into that convention with the wind in her back. She needs to say what she believes, which is that at least she and Senator Sanders have had the right debate in this country," Clinton said. "And now we need to bring everybody together and go out there with the wind on our backs and with confidence in the future of this country."

The former president is scheduled to continue blitzing the Golden State with a string of events lined up through Monday.