“This will require military warfare, but also cyberwarfare, financial warfare and ideological warfare”, he said during an address in Philadelphia.
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Ahead of the forum, Trump rolled out a new plan to boost military spending by tens of billions of dollars, including major increases in the number of active troops, fighter planes, ships and submarines. She vowed to not send American ground troops into Iraq or Syria to fight the Islamic State group.
“Immediately after taking office, I will ask my generals to present to me a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy ISIS”, Trump said, using an alternate acronym for the ISIS group.
Other ideas including asking Congress to eliminate the defense sequester and submitting a federal budget with money to rebuild the US military, developing a state-of-the art missile defense system, modernizing naval cruisers and conducting a thorough review of USA cyber defenses to identify vulnerabilities.
“We want to deter, avoid and prevent conflict through our unquestioned military strength, ” Trump declared of his Democratic opponent in his speech on Wednesday, delivered inside the exclusive Union League of Philadelphia, which first allowed women in 1986.
The appearances mark an intense, two-day focus on national security by Trump, who has offered tough rhetoric on America’s challenges overseas but few details.
Graham elaborated that he believed Clinton is “naive”, adding that Trump is wrong about how to handle the Mideast.
Among military and veteran voters, 53 percent say they would be confident in Trump’s ability to serve as an effective commander-in-chief of the US military, the poll shows, compared to 47 percent who do not. Clinton stood by her past support for USA military intervention in Libya, arguing that a less assertive policy would have risked a disaster like the one now unfolding in Syria.
Appearing on the second half of the hour-long show, Trump quickly abandoned Lauer’s entreaties to avoid attacking his opponent and focus on what he would do if elected president on November 8.
The former secretary of state also repeated “it was a mistake” to have used a personal email account while leading the department, and that she would “certainly not do it again”.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will take the same stage for the first time Wednesday night, appearing at a national security forum. The “commander in chief” national security forum, hosted by NBC, was to serve as something of a preview for voters of the candidates’ highly anticipated trio of debates later this fall.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a “commander in chief forum” hosted by NBC in NY on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016.
The report attributes the reduced military budget partly to the removal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and partly to sequestration: across-the-board cuts that automatically came into place when both parties failed to strike a spending deal in Congress in 2011.
Military leaders have said that they can live with an active duty Army of 490,000 – bolstered by almost 500,000 soldiers in the National Guard and Reserves – as long as Congress provides enough funding to support that troop level. “Trump said that if he’s elected, he would “fully eliminate” the defense sequester”. She said, “We’ve got to remove the stigma” of mental health problems.
On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced how 95 former generals and admirals have given the Democratic candidate their support. Specifically, their letter championed Trump’s “commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically”.
Trump expressed support for the cuts in interviews in 2013 – even describing them as too small – but seemed to suggest at the time that military spending should be exempt, undermining the sequester premise.
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“I think that that’s absolutely correct”, he said during the forum. Rep Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a high-level member of the Appropriations Committee.
