Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday proposed “completely” eliminating the defense budget cutbacks adopted to reduce the US deficit and said that, if elected, he will give the generals 30 days to come up with a plan to defeat and destroy the Islamic State.
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Mr Trump called for more troops, more planes and more boats at a rally in Philadelphia.
Contrasting her long experience in foreign policy with Mr. Trump’s inexperience, Ms. Clinton said: “He says he has a secret plan to defeat ISIS, but the secret is he has no plan”.
Although the first formal debate of the 2016 general election is still a few weeks away, each of the major party candidates will sit down with Matt Lauer tonight for the Commander in Chief forum on NBC.
In his speech he called his vision for the U.S. military “peace through strength”.
With the race to the White House intensifying, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump have accused each other of trying to “hide something” from the public.
Mr Trump even cribbed one the former president’s favourite phrases, “peace through strength”, when explaining why he was in favour of across-the-board increases in U.S. military spending.
Attendees cheer as Donald Trump, not pictured, speaks about immigration during a campaign event in Phoenix on August 31, 2016.
Foreign policy and national security have moved to the forefront of the campaign in recent days.
“This will require rethinking the failed policies”.
“Our adversaries are chomping at the bit”, he added.
He said he would also seek budget reforms, attrition in the federal work force, root out inefficiencies in government spending and collect billions of dollars in unpaid taxes by Americans.
He called for hundreds more new U.S. ships, planes and submarines, and vowed to train thousands more combat troops as well as developing a “state of the art” missile defence system, starting with modernising 22 Navy cruisers at a cost of about $US220 million ($287 million) apiece.
That Mr Trump says he will ask United States military leaders how to defeat IS appears to be a change of approach.
A poll released this week shows Donald Trump with a commanding 19-point lead over Hillary Clinton among military and veteran voters. “It is the single greatest asset I have – my temperament”.
“We have 62 days-just 62 days-to make the case, and I can’t do it without you”, Clinton said in Tampa.
“You know, I really don’t know”, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” when asked who he believed would do a better job.
The two candidates will each spend a half-hour on Wednesday night talking about their military readiness at an event for veterans and active service members, Xinhua news agency reported. “We recommend Hillary Clinton”, the paper’s editorial board stated.
Trump received support from 59 percent of those voters who said they were older than 65; while 59 percent of voters between the age of 18 to 29 backed Clinton. One thing that both shows Clinton’s difficulty in winning over Democratic leaning voters but also shows that she may have more room for growth in Florida is that among voters who are undecided between her and Trump, 54% of them would rather have Obama as President to only 13% who would go for Trump.
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Trump has given mixed signals about whether he wants to increase military spending overall.
