“Vladimir Putin is one of the primary sources of instability in this world, and the thought that we would have a Republican nominee so “in bed” with Putin, I think is so discouraging and really a bad thing for our country”, McMullin said. “I mean, his questions to me were very tough”.
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“What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him; we have nothing to do with it”, the Trump campaign told NPR’s Sarah McCammon.
To be certain, Trump’s overt praise of the Russian strongman is hardly a new tone for modern conservatives, who have for years lauded Putin in an effort to attack President Obama. Trump then attacked President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Obama’s first secretary of state, for their roles in the USA troop withdrawal from Iraq. He also spoke favorably of Putin’s approval ratings in Russia and welcomed the Russian leader’s remarks about him.
The real estate billionaire also said although he does not approve of the system in that country, he is clearly a leader- much more than what the US President is. Miller later said Trump wouldn’t have agreed to do the interview had he known it would be aired on RT.
Trump’s campaign responded to Clinton’s broadside with a statement saying that at the forum “she was unable to answer for her awful foreign policy judgment, mishandling of classified information and claims that the VA wait time scandal was overblown”.
“Any time anyone states says that generals are rubbish or an individual is not a hero because he or she was captured I find it appalling”, Cooke said in a statement, referring to Trump saying Sen. But he front loaded Clinton’s half-hour at the forum with questions about her emails. “Maybe the Democrats are putting that out – who knows”, Trump said.
At Friday’s meeting, which the campaign dubbed a “working session”, Michael Chertoff – who served as President George W. Bush’s final secretary of homeland security, sat at Clinton’s side.
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Clinton, due to chance by flipping a coin, spoke first. She, however, defended her action of supporting American military intervention to assist ousting Gaddafi-the Libyan dictator, despite the chaos that soon followed. And for the first time, he opened the door to granting legal status to people living in the US illegally who join the military. That assertion is contradicted by an interview Trump did with Howard Stern in September 2002 in which he was asked whether he supported the invasion. At one point, when a veteran in the audience asked Clinton for her plan to defeat ISIS, Lauer interjected, telling Clinton to reply “as briefly as you can”. He replied, “Yeah, I guess so”.
