White House hopeful Clinton teams up with liberal Warren for Ohio event

CINCINNATI, Ohio, June 27 (REUTERS) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and liberal favorite Elizabeth Warren campaigned together for the first time on Monday in Ohio, bringing a populist economic message to a swing state that could be vital in November's White House showdown with Republican Donald Trump.   Warren, a leader of the party's progressive wing and a potential vice presidential pick for Clinton, is a fiery critic of Wall Street who has also aggressively attacked the wealthy Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.   In a potential preview of a Clinton-Warren campaign team, the U.S. senator from Massachusetts said Clinton had spent her career fighting for progressive values while Trump was in the campaign to bolster his financial bottom line.  

"We're here to fight side-by-side with Hillary Clinton," Warren said at a rally in Cincinnati, while dubbing Trump "a small, insecure money grubber who fights for no one but himself."   "He will crush you into the dirt to get whatever he wants," Warren told cheering Clinton supporters. "That's who he is."   Clinton's decision to campaign with Warren for the first time in Cincinnati, a city on Ohio's southwestern border with Kentucky and Indiana, was an effort to stop Trump from gaining ground in the state by focusing on how Clinton would help improve the U.S. economy.   Ohio traditionally receives plenty of attention from presidential candidates. It has backed every successful presidential nominee since 1964 and no Republican has won the White House without carrying the state.   Warren's rhetoric about breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and reining in corporate excess could resonate with two groups Clinton must court in the Nov. 8 election - voters who backed Clinton's leftist rival Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary campaign, and those anxious about the economy who are drawn to Trump's promise to toss out international trade deals.   Since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Clinton has tried to portray businessman Trump as fundamentally unfit for the presidency.   Clinton said Warren's long history of fighting for progressive economic values made her a perfect messenger for that critique of Trump.   "She exposes him for what he is - temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president of the United States," Clinton said.   Clinton's campaign in recent days has accused Trump of caring more about how Britain's referendum vote last week to leave the European Union would benefit him financially than how it would impact the U.S. economy.   Trump's campaign said the historic vote showed Trump was in sync with a global sentiment of economic frustration and Clinton was out of step.