In a high-profile speech in San Diego today, former Secretary of State and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton lashed Republican nominee Donald Trump as “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency, warning he was so thin-skinned he would start a war over perceived insults.
While it was initially presented as a foreign policy speech for Clinton, she offered little to no clarity on her own policy platform, and instead spent materially the whole speech talking about Trump, ridiculing him for previous comments and suggesting he is too dangerous to have access to America’s massive nuclear weapons arsenal.
Clinton also faulted Trump for comments suggesting his openness to talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, presenting it as “praise” for them, and accusing Trump of having “affection for tyrants.”
Virtually the only comments independent of Trump were at the end, when Clinton accused Russia and China of working against American interests, accusing Russia of “aggressive military action” on NATO’s doorstep and China of “dumping cheap steel” on US markets. She didn’t offer solutions to either, suggesting only that she would “stand our ground.”
Trump’s own response to the speech was fairly dismissive, accusing Clinton of a “bad performance,” saying she was obviously reading from a teleprompter and didn’t “look presidential.”