Clinton said Trump’s claim at Wednesday night’s foreign policy forum that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama demonstrates that he’s unfit for the Oval Office. Almost two-thirds of the state’s voters are white, and they back Trump over Clinton by a 20-point margin, similar to Republican Mitt Romney’s 24-point advantage in the 2012 exit poll.
Advertisement
Clinton again affirmed her support for the deal reached a year ago between Iran and six major powers, led by the United States, rolling back nuclear development in exchange for sanctions relief.
Speaking to reporters Thursday outside her campaign plane in White Plains, New York, Clinton said the United States’ top priority should be to hunt down and kill the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as it did Osama bin Laden.
DONALD TRUMP: I was against the war in Iraq because I said it’s going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has.
Said Clinton: “I believe with all my heart that putting a lid on Iran’s nuclear weapons program has made Israel safer, has made the region safer, prevented a nuclear arms race”. “It’s grace that lifts us up and grace that leads us home”. She also pushed back against Trump’s repeated assertions during the campaign that he opposed the US attack on Iraq. Olsen noted a number of public sources, including in August when one ISIS spokesman wrote, “I ask Allah to deliver America to Trump”.
Trump also unveiled his “plan” to defeat ISIS which amounts to giving the military 30 days to come up with… a plan.
U.S. Generals reduced to rubble. It’s so exciting.” The Democratic presidential nominee promised she’d be back later to take questions, adding she was “so happy to have all of you with me. “I find it frustrating, but it’s part of the landscape we live in”. “Trump got mostly softballs”. Both candidates believe they have the upper hand, with Clinton contrasting her experience with Trump’s unpredictability and the Republican arguing that Americans anxious about their safety will be left with more of the same if they elect Obama’s former secretary of state.
Clinton said she will convene tomorrow a meeting of bipartisan national security leaders, former secretaries of homeland security Janet Napolitano and General John Allen to discus how to intensify efforts to defeat ISIS. Lauer might have pointed out that it was George W. Bush who signed the Status of Forces Agreement that set the terms of withdrawal, not Obama. While the candidates never appeared on stage together, the session served as a preview of sorts for their highly-anticipated presidential debates.
Online critics hit Lauer for spending too much time on Clinton’s email server and trying to cut her answers short during Wednesday’s NBC forum on national security issues. But she defended her support for USA military intervention to help oust a dictator in Libya, despite the chaotic aftermath. That assertion is contradicted by an interview Trump did with Howard Stern in September 2002 in which he was asked whether he supported the invasion. He replied, “Yeah, I guess so”.
On Thursday, Trump said he would have voted against the war if he had been serving in Congress at the time.
Advertisement
Mr Trump and rival Hillary Clinton had taken questions from military veterans.
