Hillary Clinton Vows To Fight For 'All Americans' In Speech at USF Tampa

WUSF | By Steve Newborn

Published September 6, 2016 at 5:24 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton spoke to more than 1,000 people Tuesday afternoon in a gymnasium at the University of South Florida Tampa. There, before a crowd mixed with students and others, she took jabs at her presidential opponent, Republican Donald Trump, and spoke directly to Floridians.

She said Florida will be one of the states most affected by climate change, which she vowed to help battle.

"At the rate we are going, by 2030 - which is not that far away - $70 billion dollars of coastal property in this state will be flooding at high tide," she said.

She chided Trump for building a sea wall on one of his waterfront golf courses in Ireland to combat erosion, while saying that Trump has claimed global warming is a "hoax, invented by the Chinese."

"If it affects people who lose their homes and their businesses that took a lifetime to build, it doesn't matter to him," she said. "When it comes to protecting this country against natural disasters and the threat of climate change, once again Donald Trump is totally unfit and unqualified to be our president."

She also took a note from her vanquished foe Bernie Sanders. She vowed to work for "equal work for equal pay," saying she will be a president for the 99 percent of people, not the top 1 percent.

"We're going to the top one, 10 percent, the millionaires, the billionaires, they're going to have to start paying for supporting our military, supporting our educational system, supporting our health care system," she said, while saying Trump is proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy.

"That would not only explode our national debt, it would lead to massive cuts in education and health care. And many of his proposals would really benefit his own family - but do nothing for the remaining 99-plus percent of Americans."

Also, Clinton vowed to fight for increased federal spending to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has impacted tourism in the most-affected areas of South Florida.

"I call on all Republicans to put people before politics and finally vote in favor of a clean funding bill to fight Zika right here in Florida," she said.

This was Clinton's second trip to Tampa in a month. The importance of the Interstate-4 corridor will be in play again Wednesday, when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, speaks just up the road in Orlando.