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New York — Donald Trump on Tuesday  stepped up his attacks on Hillary Clinton, accusing her of “Third World”-style corruption over her family’s charitable foundation and calling her unfit to hold office.

“It is a total embarrassment if our secretary of state can be bought or bribed or sold,” he told a rally in Austin, Texas after a damaging AP report raised questions about whether donors to the Clinton Foundation paid cash for access to America’s top diplomat.

“It’s a disgrace, this is a threat to the foundation of democracy,” said Trump. “This is what happens in Third World countries.”

The AP reported that more than half the people outside government who met Clinton while she was secretary of state donated money to the Clinton Foundation. “Hillary Clinton is totally unfit to hold public office. It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins,” Trump said.

“It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office, they sold access,” he said.

“This is corruption and this is why I have called for a special prosecutor to look into this mess,” he said.

The AP reported that at least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had telephone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department, donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programmes.

Those 85 donors contributed a combined $156m, the AP said.

AP said the meetings between Clinton and donors did not appear to violate legal agreements she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, signed before she joined the State Department.

“But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton,” the AP reported.

Meanwhile, Clinton accused Trump of embracing a brand of US political conservatism associated with white nationalism and nativism when she made a Nevada campaign stop yesterday.

Aides said Clinton will link Trump’s statements about immigration and religion to the rise of a political fringe movement in the US known as the “alternative right”, which opposes multiculturalism and immigration.  — AFP