In a foreign policy speech on Monday, the billionaire businessman said the goal of the new commission would be to “expose” networks within the U.S. “that support radicalisation”. “Only those who we expect to flourish in our country and to embrace a tolerant American society should be issued visas”, he said.
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Donald Trump said Monday he will work with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to combat the Islamic State group if elected president, reversing his earlier statements that the military alliance is obsolete and his administration might not honor USA membership obligations.
He called for parents, teachers and others to promote “American culture” and encourage “assimilation”.
But he didn’t say which countries or regions would be subject to the “extreme” vetting, and his announcement that government agencies would create the list suggested that would not happen before the election in November. That would include a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American.
He said that every year, the U.S. admits 100,000 permanent immigrants “from the Middle East”, and hundreds of thousands more temporary workers and visitors from the same region.
“Any country that shares this goal will be our allies”, Trump said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Sacred Heart University, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, in Fairfield, Conn. She kept up that argument Monday as she campaigned alongside Vice President Joe Biden in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a working class area where both have family ties.
In an interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos earlier this year, he called North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, “obsolete”.
USA warplanes, and those of allies in a 65-nation coalition, have carried out more than 14,000 airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq over the past two years, Obama said at a news conference last week.
“If my son were still in Iraq, and I say to all those who are there, the threat to their life has gone up a couple clicks”, said Biden, who added Trump is “totally, thoroughly unqualified” to be president.
“Hillary Clinton’s disastrous policies launched Islamic State onto the world stage”, he said. Still, he directly blamed the president and Clinton, who served as Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, for backing policies that “unleashed” the group, including withdrawing USA troops from Iraq in late 2011. He also attacked opponent Hillary Clinton for lacking the “mental and physical stamina” to fight ISIS threats.
He claimed the extremist group, which is the target of US-led air strikes and Special Forces operations in Iraq and Syria, was “fully operational” in 18 countries and had “aspiring branches in six more”. “They have a big, big problem in Russian Federation with [the Islamic State group]”. But they have been unable to reach an agreement on which militant groups could be targeted. “Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change is a proven absolute failure”, Trump said. He panned the long, expensive Iraq War started under Republican President George W. Bush, as well as Obama’s calls for new leadership in some Middle East countries during the pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings.
Trump didn’t offer many specifics in his speech, raising a number of questions about how he would implement his proposals.
“The fact of the matter is we have very sophisticated vetting programs in place”, she said, noting that the country has invested billions in improving systems and information sharing since the 9/11 attacks. He’s called for policies that are blatantly unconstitutional, such as a ban on Muslims from entering the country, censoring the internet and having American citizens tried before military tribunals instead of the courts.
In a series of comments Sunday on his Twitter account, Trump blamed the news media for his standing in the race against Clinton.
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Pace reported from Washington.
