EXETER, N.H. — Hillary Rodham Clinton had planned to spend her campaign stop at a high school here on Monday focusing mainly on her plan to make college more affordable. But, like most candidates for president, she also had to take questions about the latest headline-grabbing comments from Donald J. Trump.
For Mrs. Clinton, it was Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” when she questioned him during his party’s debate on Thursday.
“While what Donald Trump said about Megyn Kelly is outrageous, what the rest of the Republicans are saying about all women is also outrageous,” said Ms. Clinton, speaking to reporters after the event.
Mrs. Clinton has consistently tried to link Mr. Trump to the rest of the field, and on Monday tried to shift attention from Mr. Trump toward Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and Mr. Rubio’s comments on abortion.
“When one of their major candidates, a much younger man, the senator from Florida, says that there should be no exceptions for rape and incest, that is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency,” Mrs. Clinton said. “So the language may be more colorful and offensive,” she said, switching back to Mr. Trump, “but the thinking and the attitude toward women is very much the same.”
Mrs. Clinton also said that she attended Mr. Trump’s 2005 wedding — a point he brought up at the debate — because she was planning to be in town anyway and “thought it would be fun.”
About 600 people were at the high school for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign stop, her first such event in a two-day swing through New Hampshire. The town-hall-style affair was intended to introduce Mrs. Clinton’s plan to make college more affordable.
“College is supposed to help people achieve their dreams, but more and more, paying for college actually pushes those dreams further and further out of reach,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton, who is calling her plan the “college compact,” said it would allow students to attend public universities without taking on debt.
“No student should have to borrow to pay tuition at a public college or university. Schools will have to control their costs and show more accountability to their students,” said Mrs. Clinton, who called on states and the federal government to invest more in higher education.
Mrs. Clinton also said that students should be able to refinance the loans they do take on. “It just makes sense,” she said. “If you can refinance your mortgage or your car loan you should be able to refinance your student loan too.”
The plan, Mrs. Clinton said, would decrease interest rates on private school loans and ease the path for income-based repayment plans.
Mrs. Clinton took a series of questions from the audience, including one from Edward Combes, 28, of Londonderry, N.H., who said he had taken out a combined $250,000 in loans to pay for his undergraduate and graduate educations, spurring gasps from the audience, and that his interest rates had increased over time.
“I am really sorry, that is just wrong,” said Mrs. Clinton. She added, “You are going to be helped by my plan, I can tell you that, because we are going to be able to refinance all of your debt to bring it down to where the interest rate is right now.”
Mrs. Clinton also answered a question about the police shootings of unarmed black Americans, as in Ferguson, Mo., which this week marked the anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, whose death sparked riots. During demonstrations on Sunday night, a black man was shot and critically wounded during a gun battle with the police, officials said.
“We just had the anniversary of Ferguson, and another incident occurred, someone else being shot, we don’t know the circumstances but the facts are across-the-board concerning,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We have deep, unaddressed, systemic race and justice issues, and it’s important that we honestly talk about them.”
One member of the audience called out, asking if she could utter the widely used phrase, “Black Lives Matter.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Black lives matter.”
Later on Monday, Mrs. Clinton spoke for a crowd of more than 500 on the grassy grounds of a ski area in Manchester, N.H. There, she reiterated her support for the Iran nuclear deal, which Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, her former colleague, said over the weekend he would not support.
“I’m hoping that the agreement is finally approved because I will tell you if it’s not, all bets are off,” Mrs. Clinton said.
She added, “That’s a very bad signal to send in a quickly moving and oftentimes dangerous world.”
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