Painting a bleak picture of the state of America after eight years of Democratic rule, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to put “America First” in place of globalism, touting that he alone can fix the ills plaguing the system.
“Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” the 70-year-old Trump declared in a fiery acceptance speech at the party convention in Cleveland, asserting that, if elected, he will press ahead with his tough line on immigration, trade and outsourcing of American jobs.
While doubling down on his plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico to stop illegal immigration and loss of jobs, Trump appeared to nuance his position on his other controversial proposal to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the United States.
As per his new formulation, the United States “must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place”, he said, adding: “We don’t want them in our country.”
Hillary-bashing has been the running theme of the four-day convention and it was no different on Thursday night as Trump took the podium. For the better part of his 75-minute speech, he kept firing salvoes on his Democratic rival on a broad front as also the policies of President Barack Obama.
He blamed the policies pursued by Clinton as Obama’s Secretary of State in his first term for the chaos in Iraq, Syria and libya. By 2012, when Clinton left the administration, ISIS had spread across the region and the world, with libya in ruins, Iraq in chaos and Syria engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West, he said.
“This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” Trump said, remarking: “But Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be America’s legacy.” He also brought up her controversial use of a private email server and deletion of 33,000 mails.
His accusations of “terrible, terrible crimes” notwithstanding, Trump for once opted not to go along with the “lock her up” chants from the overflowing convention hall. Instead, he told the gathering: “let’s defeat her in November.”
“Together, we will lead our party back to the White House, and we will lead our country back to safety, prosperity, and peace….I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves,” Trump said, speaking after an introduction by his daughter Ivanka.
The New York billionaire, who painted a grim picture of the country, notably the recent wave of violence and shootings, blaming the Obama administration’s “rollback of criminal enforcement” for reversing the decade of progress in bringing down crime.
Projecting himself as the “law and order candidate” in the upcoming election, Trump exulted: “Beginning on January 20, 2017 (when the next president is set to take over), safety will be restored.”
He also attacked Obama’s policies for the state of the economy. President Obama has doubled national debt to over $19 trillion, but had nothing to show for it since “our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are (in) Third World condition.”
Asserting that his own immigration and trade policies will safeguard the interests of American workers, Trump said he will not sign any trade agreement that hurts domestic workers. Also, he will renegotiate “disastrous” trade deals such as NAFTA. He also attacked Clinton for supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Reacting to Trump’s acceptance speech, Clinton’s campaign aide John Podesta commented that the Republican nominee’s prescription of more fear, more division, more anger and more hate was just one more reminder that he is “temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be President of the United States”.