A sizable number of these voters say they would not be confident in Clinton or Trump’s ability to be an effective commander-in-chief of the nation’s military, though a slight majority would be confident in Trump (53 percent), the NBC News SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll finds.
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But this morning, after Matt Lauer spent last night letting Donald Trump say and do whatever he wanted for several hours during a presidential forum, Clinton popped a lectern on that tarmac and went in.
Matt Lauer, the moderator, pressed her about her handling of emails from a private server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
He said he would ask Pentagon leaders to present a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy the Islamic State group if he won the November 8 election. “Our president lied to us”, Trump said of Obama, falsely saying the nuclear deal with Iran put the country “on a path to nuclear weapons”.
“Everyone comes in saying they want to reduce wasteful spending”, said Todd Harrison, a military budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Instead of asking about big ideas, he asked small-bore questions that voters aren’t asking at their dinner tables”, Adam Green’s Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is pushing for a debate format where Americans generate and rank questions to be asked of the candidates, said in response to NBC’s forum.
But it was Lauer’s performance that ended up raising the most eyebrows, as critics walloped him for failing to ask follow-up questions, speeding through weighty issues, and giving undeniably unequal treatment to Clinton and Trump. 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. In one instance, he said the United States should pull back thoroughly from Iraq, and then said troops should be left behind in “various sections where they have the oil”, to secure USA energy interests.
Cesar Vargas, director of the Dream Action Coalition, said that sounded like a welcome shift in tone from the GOP presidential nominee, and said Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should embrace the same policy.
During the forum, Trump repeated a claim that has been previously debunked – that the businessman was “totally against the war in Iraq”.
Clinton, seeking to become the first female USA president, said she is convening a group of former top national security officials who have served under both Democratic and Republican presidents to map strategy on how to defeat Islamic State jihadists.
“That’s a very special situation”, Mr. Trump said. “And I could see myself working that out”. “I think there will be a lot of PhD theses and popular journalism writing on that subject from years to come”. I’m in the best possible position to understand and prevent it. “I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously – always have, always will”. While she’s articulated an anti-Islamic State plan that is more aggressive than Obama’s, she’s largely in line with the president on foreign policy.
Clinton also wove her support for the military together with a reminder that it’s nearly the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and that she was New York’s senator at that time.
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That’s already becoming a concern, too, with a new Clinton ad titled “I Love War” making the rounds, and his campaign trying to back off some of the more bellicose rhetoric within, arguing that critics are “cherry-picking” quotes and putting them in the ad to make him look bad.
