“Welcome to our big plane!” “If (Putin) says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve been just waiting for this moment”.
Advertisement
Clinton has seen her national polling lead slip slightly in recent weeks, as the general election enters its final phase and November nears.
Asked why she does not refer to the fight against ISIS as a “war on radical Islam”, Clinton argued that linking the militants’ murderous creed with the faith tradition of 2 billion people “actually serves the goal of the radical jihadists”.
President Barack Obama is hitting back at Donald Trump for the Republican’s frequent criticism of Obama’s foreign policy. But that factor has yet to sway this year’s campaign, as Trump makes the audacious gamble that voters – disenchanted with the political establishment and wearied by 15 years of war overseas – will throw out the status quo in favor of something radically different.
It offered a prelude to how Clinton and Trump will deal with questions of national security in their three upcoming presidential debates later in September and in October.
In a Trump administration, “Putin could do whatever Putin wants to do” and Trump would “make excuses for him”, she warned.
“It’s her opportunity to continue to frame the message, to own the conversation”, said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist and former Clinton campaign aide. “As opposed to letting it all happen on his timeframe and his playing field”.
It comes after a late summer period in which Clinton largely stayed out of public view, raising money to bankroll her fall campaign. It also follows a more disciplined stretch from Trump, who has commanded extensive cable TV coverage of his campaign. Only 33% said Trump will win.
Kicking off the Labor Day holiday, Clinton greeted the journalists covering her on Monday and Tuesday before departure and then returned for gaggles that covered about 20 to 25 minutes apiece.
And perceptions of Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, which came up frequently in Wednesday night’s forum, has shifted over the a year ago and a half from an issue that voters deemed mostly irrelevant to her character or ability to serve as president to one which nearly two-thirds judge as an indicator of her fitness for the job.
He appeared to suggest that once he took office he would conduct a wholesale clear out of Pentagon generals who had worked for Obama, the same military brass he has said earlier Tuesday he would ask for a new plan to fight ISIS within 30 days of taking office. “They are saying ‘please Allah make Trump president of America.’ So I’m not interested in giving aid and comfort to their evil ambitions -I want to defeat them”.
Yet some of the exchanges got complicated.
The Democratic nominee also announced a bipartisan meeting she’s planned on national security.
Advertisement
“If I were just a concerned citizen, I’d be out here doing everything I could to sound the alarm about someone like Donald Trump getting anywhere near the White House and I will continue to do that”, she said.
