The 81-year-old has so far defied calls to step aside after a disastrous debate against election rival Donald Trump last month
americas1 hour ago
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!"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."
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2016
Joe Biden on Donald Trump: "This man is totally, thoroughly unqualified to be President" https://t.co/KtdnY607jy https://t.co/3hiezbXnsU
- CNN (@CNN) August 15, 2016
Trump defined it Monday this way: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.
"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."
"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.
"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.
The 81-year-old has so far defied calls to step aside after a disastrous debate against election rival Donald Trump last month
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