Hillary
Clinton: Trump is too dangerous and unstable to have the nuclear
codes
Democratic
frontrunner attacks Trump’s ‘personal feuds and outright lies’
in blistering speech that questions GOP candidate’s suitability for
the White House
Rory Carroll in Los
Angeles
Thursday 2 June 2016
21.37 BST
Hillary Clinton has
lacerated Donald Trump’s fitness to lead the United States in a
tour-de-force assault on his record and temperament, branding him too
dangerous and unstable to be entrusted with nuclear codes and warning
of economic crisis if he were to reach the White House.
The Democratic
frontrunner and former secretary of state made the sobering yet
blistering assault in a speech in San Diego on Thursday which sought,
in effect, to disqualify the Republican presumptive nominee as a
valid candidate.
“Donald Trump’s
ideas aren’t just different, they’re dangerously incoherent.
They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants,
personal feuds and outright lies,” she said. “He is not just
unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that
requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.”
He
is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge,
stability and immense responsibility
Hillary Clinton
Flanked by US flags
for the widely trailed address, Clinton said a Trump presidency could
lead to catastrophe. “He should not have the nuclear codes because
it’s very easy to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just
because someone got under his very thin skin. We cannot let him roll
the dice with America.”
Speaking on the eve
of primary elections that are expected to push Clinton past the
threshold of delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination,
signalling the official start of the general election, Clinton made a
tacit plea to independents and moderate Republicans, saying Trump
denigrated US power even when Ronald Reagan was president.
With Bernie Sanders
threatening to spoil her nomination glory by winning California, the
speech also served as an appeal to Democrats to unite against the
real foe. “We can’t put the security of our children and
grandchildren in Donald Trump’s hands.” As president, she said,
“I believe he will take our country down a truly dangerous path.”
She continued:
“Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the situation room making life or
death decisions on behalf of the United States. Do we want him making
those calls? Someone thin-skinned and quick to anger. Do we want his
finger anywhere near the button? Making Donald Trump our
commander-in-chief would be a historic mistake.”
The former first
lady deconstructed Trump’s policy positions as a recipe for
alienating allies, emboldening enemies and coddling dictators.
Clinton pointed out how Trump had alienated allies such as the
British prime minister, the mayor of London, the president of Mexico
and Pope Francis.
Hillary
Clinton: ‘Making Donald Trump our commander-in-chief would be a
historic mistake.’
She also noted his
praise for Russian’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim
Jong-un. “I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his
affection for tyrants … If Donald gets his way they’ll be
celebrating in the Kremlin. We cannot let that happen.”
“He says he has
foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in
Russia,” she said, adding at another point in the speech: “This
isn’t reality television, this is actual reality.”
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Later, Clinton
added: “It is not hard to see how a Trump presidency could lead to
a global economic crisis.”
The former secretary
of state’s speech, staged in front of a wall of US flags, rebutted
a foreign policy address Trump made in April in which he promised to
save “humanity itself” and “shake the rust off America’s
foreign policy”.
Trump pitched
himself as a serious commander-in-chief in that speech with an
unusually detailed – and scripted – address to policymakers in
Washington last April.
Seeking Reagan’s
mantle, he promised a foreign policy strategy that would “endure
for several generations” by seeking peace through strength. He
accused Clinton and Barack Obama of “reckless, rudderless and
aimless” behaviour in the Middle East and said he would place
American security above all else, replacing “chaos with peace”.
Critics said the
speech contained multiple contradictions and upended previous policy
positions, leaving in doubt his views on talking to Iran, pressuring
Nato allies to shoulder more defence costs, nation building, wooing
goodwill in the Arab world, and whether he thinks the US foreign
policy should be “unpredictable” or “disciplined, deliberate
and consistent”.
Clinton’s expected
intervention on Thursday came after another tumultuous political week
that has put Trump on the defensive over his allegedly fraudulent
university, prompting him to make vitriolic attacks on the judge
hearing the case.
The former first
lady, meanwhile, is battling to fend off a surging Sanders campaign
that has closed a big deficit and threatens to snatch victory in
California’s 7 June Democratic primary. According to the Associated
Press she is just 71 delegates shy of the 2,383 needed to clinch the
nomination, and could do so with big wins in the Virgin Islands,
Puerto Rico and New Jersey, which vote before California. Losing the
Golden State, however, would be an important symbolic blow.
Thursday’s speech
in the historic Prado district in Balboa park, a landmark in San
Diego, a city with military tradition, signalled a new gloves-off
approach to Trump and a probably fractious presidential race in the
lead-up to November.
In the midst of her
speech on Thursday, Trump used Twitter to swipe back in typical
style. “Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!” he tweeted.
“Reading poorly from the telepromter [sic]! She doesn’t even look
presidential!”
.webp)
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