While Gates says that Clinton still has time to develop her policies and establish trustworthiness, he believes that Trump is “beyond fix”. He wrote that on national security,”I believe Mr. Trump is beyond fix”.
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Donald Trump derided former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, calling the national security official a “clown” and a “mess”. Never met the guy, never saw him. The end result is look where we are. “He is stubbornly uninformed” and “temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform”, Gates wrote in an op-ed piece.
Gates, now the chancellor at William & Mary, offered no such optimism on Trump, describing the GOP nominee as “naïve and irresponsible” on Russian Federation, “oblivious” on the fight against ISIS, and “willfully ignorant” about foreign relations and the military. “He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief”.
‘I never met him, I never talked to him, ‘ he added. “Mr. Trump has the right to defend himself from people who I don’t think are looking at the substance of his plans”. He characterized him as someone who is “willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about our military and its capabilities, and about government itself”.
Gates, a registered Republican, has served under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Gates stressed the importance of having a president whose advisors will say what needs to be said, not necessarily what the president wants to hear – a theme he also expressed during a May interview with “Face the Nation” moderator John Dickerson.
Pence continued to call Trump a “broad-shouldered leader”, adding that Gates “was part of the Obama Administration’s handling of the USA withdrawal from Iraq”, which prompted ISIS to fill a power vacuum.
Trump has posted a response on his Twitter account saying he’s never met Gates, and Gates ‘knows nothing about me’.
The Republican continued his attack on the former defense secretary at a Colorado rally later that night.
“I must tell you that just before I got off the plane, a bomb went off in NY and nobody knows exactly what’s going on”, Trump said, even though the nature of the explosion has not yet been determined by law enforcement officials, let alone that a bomb caused it.
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‘The world we confront is too perilous and too complex to have as president a man who believes he, and he alone, has all the answers and has no need to listen to anyone, ‘ Gates wrote.
