In a preview of sorts for the first presidential debate later this month, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went sparring at a discussion forum on Wednesday night, questioning each other’s temperament, judgement and preparedness to be the next US President and Commander-in-Chief.
It was not a face-to-face encounter as such, but the two candidates, making a back-to-back appearance at the “Commander-in-Chief” forum hosted by NBC News, offered sharply divergent views on the state of the nation and their own national security and foreign policy formulations.
If Clinton argued that “rock steadiness” was a must to be Commander-in-Chief, suggesting obliquely that Trump could not lay claim to that attribute, the New York billionaire painted her as a trigger-happy person believing in US interventionism and thrusting the country into international conflicts.
Trump offered a similar assessment of Clinton at a Philadelphia event earlier in the day, commenting: “Sometimes it seemed like there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that Hillary Clinton didn’t want to invade, intervene in or topple. She’s trigger-happy and very unstable.”
As unrestrained as ever, Trump also fired salvos at President Barack Obama time and again, at one point remarking that under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the military generals have been “reduced to rubble”.
At another point, he went on to say that he regarded Russian President Vladimir Putin as more of a leader than Obama. “The man (Putin) has very strong control over a country. It’s a very different system and I don’t happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader,” Trump argued.
When reminded by NBC host Matt lauer about Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Trump shot back: “Do you want me to start naming some of the things President Obama does at the same timeIJ”
Asked if the mutual admiration between him and Putin could end up benefiting Russia at the expense of US if he were to become president, Trump suggested that he was a hard negotiator who would not be easily swayed by complimentary remarks.
Clinton, when questioned about what critics call her hawkish foreign policy record as Secretary of State, said: “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again and we are not putting ground troops into Syria.”
“I view force as a last resort, not a first choice. I will do everything in my power to make sure our men and women in the military are fully prepared for any challenge they may have to face on our behalf, but I will also be as careful as I can in making the most significant decisions any president and commander and chief can make about sending our men and women into harm’s way,” she said.
While conceding yet again that her vote as a Senator to give President George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq was a mistake, Clinton said: “I am asking to be judged on the totality of my record.”
Both Clinton and Trump said that defeating and destroying ISIS was their top counterterrorism goal.