Clinton, Trump confront weaknesses in security forum

Gabriel Debenedetti writes on the Politico website that neither candidate did much to advance their cause, with Hillary Clinton spending “a third of the time fending off questions about her emails” while “Donald Trump struggled to explain his secret plan to defeat the Islamic State”.

Citing a senior national security expert, Hillary Clinton suggested in an interview broadcast on Israeli TV Thursday that terror groups may hope that Donald Trump is elected president of the United States.

Wednesday’s forum served as a preview of sorts for Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump’s highly-anticipated presidential debates.

The Republican presidential nominee told the forum the Russian president “has been a leader far more than our president [Obama] has been”.

At one point, making a reference to 2012 Benghazi attack, Trump said “She made a bad mistake in Libya”, which was immediately responded by Clinton in words: “We made the world safer” by not allowing a civil war in Libya.

Speaking to reporters the morning after a NY security forum featuring separate appearances by the two candidates, Clinton also slammed the businessman for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin and saying U.S. generals had been “reduced to rubble” by the policies of U.S. President Barack Obama.

She promised to support Iraqi forces working to take their country back from ISIS, but drew the clear line: “They are not gonna get ground troops”.

Democrats and Republicans have radically different views of Hillary Clinton.

“Our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow”, he said.

“Because that would not be appropriate at all”, Trump added.

The response came after being asked her reaction to Trump’s appearance on the state-funded Russian Television. At one point, Trump insisted he was “totally” against the war in Iraq, which is not the case, yet his statement was not challenged by Lauer.

Clinton also wove her support for the military together with a reminder that it’s nearly the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and that she was New York’s senator at that time. “But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?”, he said on Wednesday.

US investigators believe that people working for the Russian government hacked into the DNC. But he also noted he still has “great faith in the military”. He replied, “Yeah, I guess so”.

Clinton said Thursday she would convene a meeting of bipartisan security experts Friday to discuss the fight against Islamic State militants. But he still did not clearly say that he opposed the war – and just days before, he had told Cavuto that the war looked like “a tremendous success from a military standpoint”, as Buzzfeed also reported in February.

“I think this will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning because you’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in and they’re going to be legalised and they’re going to be able to vote and once that all happens you can forget it”, he said.