He also wants USA generals to come up with a plan to defeat the self-styled Islamic State (IS) in his first 30 days in the White House.
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Donald Trump pledged to massively increase U.S. military spending and swiftly demand a defeat plan of the ISIS group if he becomes president, burnishing his defense bona fides on Wednesday ahead of a forum with Hillary Clinton.
The New York businessman, who has struggled at times to demonstrate a command of foreign policy, also seemed to acknowledge he does not now have a plan to address cyber security or the Islamic State group.
Trump, meanwhile, reiterated his position that the USA should co-operate more closely with Russian Federation – a country he said “wants to defeat ISIS as much as we do”.
“This will require military warfare, but also cyberwarfare, financial warfare and ideological warfare”, Trump said during an address in Philadelphia.
NBC notes that neither candidate received stellar Commander-in-Chief ratings from military voters, although Trump fared much better than Clinton.
In his speech he called his vision for the USA military “peace through strength”.
The appearances mark an intense, 2-day focus on national security by Trump, who has offered tough rhetoric on America’s challenges overseas.
“As Americans head to the polls in a couple of months”, Hoh said in a statement on Wednesday, “the two major parties share at least one thing in common: both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are unabashed militarists, seeing no shame or dysfunction in America’s wars overseas, and seemingly promising to escalate current wars or begin new ones”. According to notes released from Clinton’s interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, she said she relied on others with knowledge about handling classified files.
“At the end of the day, if you’re not anxious about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton being president of the United States, you’re insane”.
Clinton’s campaign countered by announcing the endorsements of 95 retired generals and admirals who back her presidential bid and pointed to Trump’s criticism of a Gold Star family and war veteran Sen.
Trump’s comments came during a televised national security forum where he and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton each fielded 30 minutes of questions about their experience and judgment to be commander in chief. The forum could serve as a warm-up to their highly anticipated first presidential debate, scheduled for September 26 in NY.
Hillary Clinton defended her history of handling classified information, while Donald Trump was grilled on his support for Russian Federation during Wednesday night’s highly anticipated national security forum.
His address earlier in the day also included plans to eliminate deep spending cuts known as the “sequester” that were enacted when Congress failed to reach a budget compromise in 2011.
Mr Trump hasn’t made clear whether he would also seek to lift the domestic spending caps, which Democrats say is a necessary condition for undoing the defense limits.
Trump expressed support for the sequester in interviews in 2013 – even describing them as too small – but seemed to suggest at the time that military spending should be exempt.
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As for how he would pay for it, Trump insisted on Wednesday that he would fully offset the costs of his new spending through savings and new revenue.
