The candidates spoke back-to-back at the forum Wednesday night, each fielding 30 minutes of questions.
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A forum created to test the leading presidential candidates’ capacity for military leadership Wednesday night displayed as much unpredictability as the rest of this election, as questions and answers veered off-topic and both candidates were put on the defensive several times.
“I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble”, he said.
The town hall was hosted by MSNBC/NBC on the Intrepid aircraft carrier and the audience was made up largely of veterans.
Clinton’s answer to Matt Lauer’s question about her private email system: “Well, Matt, first of all, as I have said repeatedly- it was a mistake- to have a personal account”.
Trump said Clinton made “a awful mistake on Libya” when she was secretary of state.
Clinton also defended her decision to favour intervention in Libya in 2011, stating that the U.S. had the support of both North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Arab League, and claimed such intervention prevented Muammar Gaddafi from massacring thousands of Libyan citizens.
“Nothing – and I will repeat this, and this is verified in the report by the Department of Justice – none of the emails sent or received by me had such a header”, she maintained. According to notes released from her interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, she said she relied on others with knowledge about handling classified files.
Clinton vowed on Wednesday that the USA would never make another deployment of troops to Iraq, or send a force to Syria, as part of her plan to defeat the Islamic State.
He later told an audience in Philadelphia that he would give USA commanders 30 days to come up with a plan to defeat Islamic State, after boasting this week that he has his own “secret plan”.
Our friends at Breitbart were pretty tough on Lauer saying, “Matt Lauer failed to ask the White House hopeful a single question about the myriad allegations that she used her position as secretary of state to sell access to major Clinton Foundation donors”. “If (Putin) says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him”.
The Republican also renewed his praise for Mr Putin and his disdain for President Obama, saying that the Russian enjoyed an 82% approval rating.
Trump stood by a previous comment that appeared to blame military sexual assaults on men and women serving together, but added he would not seek to remove women from the military. He seemed to narrowly shift his approach on immigration by indicating he’s open to allowing undocumented residents to serve in the USA military.
“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. “But that’s one of the weakest, least incisive performances I’ve seen from a presidential forum moderator”, tweeted Will Saletan, a writer at Slate.
She “has taught us all how vulnerable we are to cyber hacking”, Trump said, adding that it was “probably the only thing we’ve learned from Hillary Clinton”.
It was an opportunity for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to pass the all-important commander-in-chief test. But we won’t do it with ground troops, she insisted.
Clinton has spent much of the summer trying to paint Trump as ill-prepared to be commander in chief and too unpredictable to make decisions that put US service members in harm’s way.
Trump, who cited endorsements from 88 generals and admirals on Tuesday, called for increased defense spending and an end to the automatic series of congressional budget cuts known as “sequestration” in his Wednesday remarks, saying that would permit the financing of more submarines, ships and troops.
Robby Mook said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday that Trump’s answer for how to defeat the Islamic State group shows he had “no plan” in the first place. “We want to deter, avoid and prevent conflict through our unquestioned military strength”.
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On the fight against Daesh, the Democrat repeated her stance of leaving ground troops off the table.
