Trump Goes on the Attack in New Foreign-Policy Speech

Jacob Heilbrunn

Politics, United States

It was a defiant Donald Trump who warned about a Muslim threat today.

It was a defiant Donald Trump who delivered his new foreign-policy address today. “The Muslims have to work with us,” he stated, “They have to work with us. They know what’s going on.”

This marked a polar opposite from the tones that Hillary Clinton sounded a few hours before Trump—and from the ones that leading Republicans such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would like him to adopt. Trump declared that he would not succumb to political correctness in battling radical Islamic fundamentalism. And he repeatedly invoked repeatedly an omnipresent Muslim threat inside America that threatens to sap its liberties and freedoms, replacing them with terror, violence and fear.

In contrast Clinton used more emollient language. She said, “we should be intensifying contacts in those communities, not scapegoating or isolating them.” Throughout, Trump made it clear that he will depict President Obama and Hillary Clinton as wholly unfit to combat the grave perils emanating from inside and outside America. He sought to undermine Clinton’s support in the LGBT community by essentially arguing that her support was merely rhetorical. In practice, he suggested, she is endorsing policies that jeopardize its safety.

In contrast to Clinton—who did not mention Trump by name during her speech Monday and offered a three-part plan that included beefing up resources for first responders and law enforcement and intelligence officials—Trump repeatedly assailed her and Obama. He pointed to her support for intervention in Libya as helping to spawn terrorism.