Questioned back-to-back but not face-to-face, the presidential foes will address an audience of veterans and active-duty troops – and a national TV audience – from the decommissioned USS Intrepid, which is now a floating museum in NY.
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Said Clinton: “They know they can count on me to be the kind of commander in chief who will protect our country and our troops, and they know they cannot count on Donald Trump”.
The forum came hours after Trump laid into Clinton as “trigger happy”.
While still not giving many specifics on his plan to fight ISIS – which he has said he won’t release so as not to tip off US enemies – Trump said there would be “different generals” who would advise him on national security and military policy as president. Creating power vacuum filled by terrorist groups, like ISIS (Islamic State).
The event was billed as the first joint event of the general election featuring both presidential nominees, and is considered a warm-up round to the actual live debates, the first of which gets underway September 26. They included Trump’s defense of a past tweet suggesting that sexual assault in the military is due to men and women serving together, and his long-standing claim that the USA should have seized oil reserves in Iraq and Libya.
Citing Putin’s popularity – “he does have an 82% approval rating” – Trump also said that “he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader”.
“I will ask Congress to fully offset the cost of increased military spending”.
Ryan made it clear Thursday he does not share Trump’s view of the Russian leader.
The Republican nominee declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been a better leader than his U.S. counterpart and suggested he would look hard to find common ground on which to work on.
Trump went on to characterise his relationship with Putin as mutually beneficial. “I don’t want people to be reading about it in 200 or 400 years”, said Mr. Trump.
Some of Trump’s foreign policy positions, such as his proposal to fight terrorism by imposing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, have alarmed not just Democrats but many in his own party’s leadership. She reiterated that she had made mistakes in relying on a personal email account and private server as secretary of state and in voting for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a senator. Trump: Excuse me. No, it wouldn’t at all.
“The generals under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have not been successful”, he said.
Trump is to use his Philadelphia speech to accuse Clinton of backing “military adventurism” for her handling of conflicts in Libya and the Middle East while she was Obama’s secretary of state from 2009-13.
He said he has “no interest in Libya” if the United States doesn’t take the country’s oil and simultaneously advocated for US troops leaving Iraq and USA troops staying and taking Iraq’s oil.
The attacks are reminiscent of Clinton’s full-out offensive two weeks ago asserting that Trump and his supporters were racist.
Trump, in turn, criticised the Obama administration as pursuing “the dumbest foreign policy” he had ever seen.
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Asked what his own strategy would look like against the militant group, Trump declined to comment.
