I will admit that it's to the point that I want to vomit every time I hear Donald Trump bloviate and hurl insults at Hillary Clinton and anyone who doesn't share his hate and bigotry based agenda. The man is beyond disgusting and the thought of him in the White House ought to send chills down the back of sane and rational people. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton let loose on Trump and made the case that the man is too unstable - not to mention ignorant - to occupy the office of the presidency. Politico looks at Clinton's attack on Trump. Here are highlights:
Hillary Clinton threw a barrage of stinging one-liners at Donald Trump on Thursday. But at the heart of her speech was one powerful question for voters: “Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?”
In an address that slammed Trump on everything from what Clinton called his bigotry toward Muslims and Mexicans to his talk of torturing terrorists and executing their family members, nothing was so grave as Clinton's implication that a Trump presidency might end the 70-year global taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.
“This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes,” Clinton said. “It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”
At a time when Clinton is road-testing lines of attack against the businessman who sometimes seems immune to traditional political rhetoric, Democrats say the nuclear issue could be especially potent, touching on some of the deepest fears voters have about their own security.
Clinton is not the first to raise the question, however, and it remains to be seen whether she will succeed where Trump’s GOP rivals failed.
In Clinton’s telling, Trump isn't just temperamental and prone to impulsive fights—he's dangerously cavalier about nuclear weapons and their potential for death and destruction on a mind-warping scale.
"This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia," Clinton said.
Clinton also recalled Trump’s quip about a potential conflict between Japan and North Korea: “If they do, they do. Good luck, enjoy yourself, folks.” “I wonder if he even realized he’s talking about nuclear war,” she marveled.
Clinton also reminded listeners that Trump “refused to rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS, which would mean mass civilian casualties.”
[T]he nuclear question is still among the simplest and most powerful ways to focus voter attention on a candidate’s fitness to be president. “It’s an effective card,” Rosner said. “If you go back to 1964 and the Daisy ad, it’s a well-established idea that if someone is extreme the most dangerous manifestation of that is what they would do as commander in chief.”
There is some evidence to suggest that Clinton already has the better part of the argument. When Fox News asked voters in mid-May whom they trust more with “decisions about nuclear weapons,” the former first lady and secretary of state came out ahead of Trump by 11 points, 49-38.
Clinton is hardly the first to fret in public about Trump's potential proximity to the nuclear "football," the briefcase carried by a military aide who travels with the president containing communications equipment that allows him to authorize a nuclear launch. Marco Rubio warned against handing “the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.” Jeb Bush said that he had “grave doubts” about entrusting Trump with America's atomic arsenal. And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal fretted against entrusting "such a hothead with the nuclear codes."
Rosner added that the question of foreign conflict has more salience since the Iraq War, which has left swing voters "expressing a lot of worry about a Republican tendency to 'shoot from the hip' and not think through the use of force. That obviously goes far beyond nukes, and gets to fears of getting involved in another foreign war without clear purpose or outcome."
That fear has dogged Republicans for decades.
Donald Trump - and his supporters - live in a fantasy world and see life as one never ending reality TV show. Those of us in touch with objective reality need to do all in our power to keep Trump out of the White House.
No comments:
Post a Comment