Donald Trump on Monday promised “extreme vetting” of immigrants, including ideological screening that that will allow only those who “share our values and respect our people” into the United States.
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He argued in a speech fleshing out his plans to combat terrorism that tighter immigration standards were needed to fight Islamic State with the same vigor with which the US fought the Cold War.
In a speech in swing state Ohio, Trump will also call for “foreign policy realism” and an end to nation-building if elected president. Any country that wants to work with the U.S.to defeat “radical Islamic terrorism” will be a US ally, he is expected to say.
In a speech the GOP nominee will deliver on Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, Trump will argue that the USA needs to work with anyone that shares that mission, regardless of other ideological and strategic disagreements – presumably meaning Russian Federation.
“It is now time for a new approach”, Trump said. “I call it extreme, extreme vetting”, Donald Trump said. The test would include social media searches, written quizzes, and interviews, through which applicants will be assessed for “values like tolerance and pluralism”.
Trump is expected to tackle foreign policy and national security in a speech in Ohio Monday.
Trump took aim at President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, saying their policies “unleashed ISIS” and destabilized the Middle East.
Trump did not clarify how US officials would assess the veracity of responses to the questionnaires or how much manpower it would require to complete such arduous vetting.
Later Monday morning Clinton senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan released a memo slamming Trump on his foreign policy and reiterating a point she often makes on the campaign trail: that Trump is “unfit to be our commander in chief”.
Trump proposed temporarily suspending immigration “from some of the most unsafe and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism”.
Recent polls show he is significantly trailing behind Hillary Clinton in key battleground states.
In another break with goals of the Obama administration, Trump vowed to maintain the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and devote more effort to capturing, rather than killing, terrorist leaders, in hopes of gathering more intelligence.
Perdue, who enthusiastically endorsed Trump in June, said he struggles with the NY businessman’s choice of words, such as his feud with the family of a slain U.S. Muslim soldier or his assertion that President Barack Obama is the founder of the Islamic State terror group.
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Previously, however, Trump had moved beyond his call to ban all foreign Muslims from the United States and proposed barring all individuals from counties “compromised by terrorism” – though he has not specified which countries match that criterion. He then said that it was just “sarcasm,” and then later modified that tweeted statement to “I’m being sarcastic, then – but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you”, when he addressed a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania Friday.
