After about a year of having to battle fellow Republicans, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump homed in on Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton in a calculated speech as he blamed the former secretary state for — among other things — the rise of the Islamic State.
“The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions and trillions of dollars and unleashed ISIS across the world,” Trump said from his SoHo hotel in New York City Wednesday morning.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Trump Soho Hotel in New York Wednesday. Trump's address marks his official opening salvo against Hillary Clinton, the prospective Democratic presidential nominee, in the general election. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
From her campaign slogan to her policy positions, Trump calmly issued a barrage of criticisms against the Clinton as he called her a “world class liar” and said she has “perfected the politics of personal profit and even theft.” The billionaire businessman painted Clinton as a candidate who has manipulated the American people financially and politically.
“Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency,” Trump said to massive applause and chants of his name from the audience.
But it was her tenure as secretary of state and foreign policy experience that Trump focused on the most, saying, “Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched.”
“ISIS threatens us today because of the decisions Hillary Clinton has made along with President Obama,” he said. “In short, Hillary Clinton’s tryout for the presidency has produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another, one by one. They’re all bad; she’s virtually done nothing right, she’s virtually done nothing good.”
Trump blasted Clinton’s decisions in Libya and contended that she “started the war that put” Ambassador Chris Stevens in the country before he died in the Benghazi attacks. It was Clinton’s invasion of Libya, he said, that “handed the country over to the ISIS barbarians.”
But as he slammed Clinton for her decisions, Trump also criticized the potential first female president for her campaign slogan, “I’m With Her.”
“You know what my response to that is? I’m with you, the American people,” Trump said.
Ahead of his massive speech, Trump announced the launch of a new website that promises to "showcase some of Clinton’s most disastrous lies to the American people" called LyingCrookedHillary.com.
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