New York - Trump vowed to work "very closely" with NATO, sidestepping previous criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
By Agencies
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Published: Tue 16 Aug 2016, 9:53 AM
Last updated: Tue 16 Aug 2016, 1:21 PM
Donald Trump on Monday laid out a US blueprint for defeating global terrorism in partnership with NATO and Middle East allies, demanding extreme restrictions on immigration and likening the fight to the Cold War. The Republican nominee, who is tanking in the polls following weeks of self-inflicted disasters, made his pitch to be a security strongman as the Democratic vice president accused him of imperiling the lives of Americans. "We will defeat terrorism just as we have defeated every threat we faced at every age," said Trump in Ohio, a battleground state considered essential to winning the US presidential election. His foreign policy address marked the latest attempt by the Trump campaign to get their maverick candidate back on message as his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton surges ahead in the polls. Watering down his highly contested assertion that Barack Obama and Clinton created the so-called Daesh group, Trump said Daesh was "the direct result of policy decisions" made by the president and former secretary of state, referencing chaos in Iraq and Libya. He claimed the extremist group, which is the target of US-led air strikes and Special Forces operations in Iraq and Syria, was "fully operational" in 18 countries and had "aspiring branches in six more." The real-estate tycoon and former reality TV star promised to end the US policy of "nation building" and called for a "new approach" in partnership with foreign allies to "halt the spread of terrorism." Trump vowed to work "very closely" with NATO, sidestepping previous criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation after saying that a Trump presidency would not automatically leap to members' defense. "I have previously said NATO was obsolete because it failed to deal adequately with terrorism. Since my comments, they have changed their policy and now have a new division focused on terror threats, very good," he said. Trump said he believed the United States could find "common ground with Russia" in the fight against the Daesh group - a claim bound to do little to silence critics who accuse him of being soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said his administration would "aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy Daesh," and be a "friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East." At home he demanded new immigration screening, saying that the perpetrators of a series of attacks in the United States - including the September 11, 2001, hijackings, the 2013 Boston bombings and the recent mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub - involved "immigrants or the children of immigrants." "We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people," he ventured, promising to temporarily suspend immigration from "the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world" that export terrorism.
"Stay on message" is the chant. I always do - trade, jobs, military, vets, 2nd A, repeal Ocare, borders, etc - but media misrepresents! - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2016
"In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. I call it extreme vetting." The Clinton campaign responded by stating that any policy submitting immigrants to ideological tests was a "ploy." "This so-called 'policy' cannot be taken seriously." Clinton senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement. "How can Trump put this forward with a straight face when he opposes marriage equality and selected as his running mate the man who signed an anti-LGBT law in Indiana? It's a cynical ploy to escape scrutiny of his outrageous proposal to ban an entire religion from our country and no one should fall for it," he said. Trump is 'thoroughly unqualified' for presidency:Biden Vice President Joe Biden, who on Monday hit the 2016 campaign trail with Clinton for the first time, trashed Trump as unqualified for the White House and accused him of endangering the lives of US troops. Biden's folksy demeanor and ability to connect with working-class voters is considered an asset for Clinton particularly among blue-collar white male voters who lean toward her Republican rival.
"No major party nominee in the history of the United States of America has known less or been less prepared to deal with our national security than Donald Trump," Biden said. Trump's accusation that Obama and Clinton created the Daesh group had imperiled the lives of US troops, Biden said. "If my son were still in Iraq and I say to all those who are there, the threat to their life has gone up a couple of clicks," he said. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that corruption investigators in Ukraine say an illegal, off-the-books payment network earmarked $12.7 million in cash payments in 2007-2012 for Paul Manafort, now Trump's campaign chairman. Manafort denied any wrongdoing, saying he had "never received a single 'off-the books cash payment,'" or worked for the governments of Ukraine or Russia.
Trump's immigration plan raises many unanswered questions Donald Trump's speech on foreign policy focused in large part on his proposal to suspend immigration from dangerous parts of the world and impose a new system of "extreme vetting" that would subject applicants to questions about their personal ideology. Trump didn't offer many specifics in his speech, raising a number of questions about how he would implement his proposals. Here a look at some of the questions the Republican presidential nominee didn't answer on Monday: WHAT DOES 'EXTREME VETTING' MEAN?
Trump defined it Monday this way: "In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles - or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law. Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into our county."
What would be different under Trump's plan? To start, aides said, he would consider adding a review of social media accounts and conducting interviews with an applicant's friends and family. But it's unclear how Trump's system would determine a potential immigrant's position on what could be highly subjective issues. What some may consider to be "support (for) bigotry and hatred" may be, in another person's view, an expression of free speech protected by the First Amendment. That raises questions about where a Trump administration would draw the line. --- WHO WOULD BE SUBJECT TO THE IMMIGRATION ON BAN? Trump proposed temporarily suspending immigration "from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism." Which countries exactly? That's TBD. Trump says that as soon as he takes office, he would ask the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to identify "a list of regions where adequate screening cannot take place." Trump said,
"There are many such regions" and vows to "stop processing visas from those areas until such time as it is deemed safe to resume based on new circumstances or new procedures."
Also unclear is whether such a ban would only apply to people seeking to immigrate to the US to live and to work, or would affect tourists, too. Trump used both "immigrants" and "visitors" during his Monday speech, raising the prospect he could scrap an existing waiver program that allows people from friendly countries to visit the US as tourists without a visa. --- HOW MUCH WILL IT COST? Trump has not broached the topic of how much it would cost to set up and run his new vetting system. The US already screens everyone who enters the country, said Doris Meissner, who heads the Migration Policy Institute's US immigration policy program. "The fact of the matter is we have very sophisticated vetting programs in place," she said, noting that the country has invested billions in improving systems and information sharing since the 9/11 attacks. The costs of an expansion of that system as Trump has proposed, she said, would likely be "extraordinary." --- DOES HE STILL WANT TO BAR MUSLIMS FROM THE US? Trump's unprecedented call in December 2015 "for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on" is still listed on his campaign website, and he has yet to personally denounce the controversial proposal. Following the June shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Trump appeared to introduce a new standard, vowing to "suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we fully understand how to end these threats." Trump's aides described the new language as a replacement for the religious test, but Trump has described it differently.
"I actually don't think it's a rollback. In fact, you could say it's an expansion. I'm looking now at territory," he said in a July interview with NBC News, suggesting the change was more about language. "People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. 'Oh, you can't use the word Muslim,' remember this? And I'm OK with that, because I'm talking territory instead of Muslim."
Trump had promised to release a list of "terror countries," but never did. His speech on Monday referred to regions, with the caveat that he might not name them until after taking office.
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