The two U.S. presidential nominees – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – had their first showdown of the campaign on Wednesday night while appearing on NBC’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum” in NY.
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Democratic presidentaial nominee Clinton pledged that the U.S. was “not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we are not putting ground troops into Syria”, while the Republican nominee disagreed, reported the Guardian.
276-a-16-(Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate, in broadcast of Commander-in-Chief Presidential Forum)-“nothing for them”-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vows to provide veterans with better treatment, and says that suicide prevention is a top priority”.
The event exposed the gulf between Trump and Clinton on issues such as combating ISIS and managing the military. During an address on defence spending in Philadelphia earlier in the day, the former reality TV star suggested there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that Clinton did not want to invade – an assertion he repeated on Wednesday evening. They include special operations forces who are helping the Iraqi, Kurdish, Arab and other indigenous fighters, plus advisers, support troops and others.
On Tuesday night, Trump promised to convene his military commanders soon after taking office with “a simple instruction” aimed at the Islamic State group.
NBC will host the first presidential debate September 26.
Trump defends an old tweet on military sexual assault: “No, not to kick (women) out”. In the past Putin has called Trump “bright” and “talented”. The tweet read, quote: “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military, only 238 convictions”. “We have to come down very hard on that and do something about that”, he said.
Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly refused to say directly whether he had confidence in Trump as commander in chief when questioned on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday.
I do believe that Donald Trump is growing in his understanding of these issues and I think that hes beginning to get more and more people around him that have a depth of understanding as to the complexities and Im watching this evolve, he said.
Trump went on to characterise his relationship with Putin as mutually beneficial. On Wednesday Trump also said, “If he [Putin] says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him”.
“I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Putin”.
“Hillary with her serial dishonesty and corruption allegations, and Trump, just with everything – people are still trying to make that determination about both of them: Are either of these people qualified to do the job?” said Republican pollster Dan Judy of North Star Opinion Research.
Clinton said those comments and others showed Trump is ill-equipped to be president.
NBC host Matt Lauer is in hot water after failing to fact check Donald Trump on his disproven claim about not supporting the Iraq war in 2002.
“I took responsibility for my decision”, she said of her vote for the Iraq war.
However, Trump asserted that he had been against the war all along.
On the US intervention in Libya in 2011, Clinton rejected Trump’s criticism of her support for the effort as secretary of state.
“We have had the worst and you could even say the dumbest foreign policy”, Trump said, while offering no specific policies.
“The fact is that there is so much titillation from and about Donald Trump that there’s very little bandwidth left for much of a focus on policy”, said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin of Hart Research Associates, who works with the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA.
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Asked what his own strategy would look like against the militant group, Trump declined to comment. He said he would make the government “leaner”, in part by using attrition to shrink the workforce, and said he’d bring in new money by asking countries like Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia to pay more for the security the USA provides them.
