On National Security, Trump Strikes Out Again
STEPHEN F. HAYES
TWS
When Donald Trump botched a question Thursday about General Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, it wasn’t the first time. He did the same thing last month during the Fox News debate, but his answer was largely overlooked in the post-debate hysteria over Trump’s answers to questions on a third party candidacy and his treatment of women.
Bret Baier asked Trump about Suleimani and offered the candidate a helpful tutorial in the introduction.
“Candidates, you may not have seen the late developing news today our Fox Pentagon team broke earlier this evening about a top Iranian general traveling to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Baier said. “His name is General Qassem Soleimani. He's blamed for hundreds of U.S. troops death in Iraq and Afghanistan. His trip to Russia appears to directly violate U.N. Security Council resolutions to confine him to Iran. So, Mr. Trump, if you were president, how would you respond to this?”
“I would be so different from what you have right now. Like, the polar opposite,” Trump said, before setting off in several different directions at the same time. “We have a president who doesn't have a clue. I would say he's incompetent, but I don't want to do that because that's not nice. But if you look at the deals we make, whether it's the nuclear deal with 24 hour periods—and by the way, before you get to the 24 hours, you have to go through a system. You look at Sergeant Bergdahl, we get Bergdahl, a traitor, and they get five of the big, great killers leaders that they want. We have people in Washington that don't know what they're doing. Now, with Iran, we're making a deal, you would say, we want him. We want out our prisoners. We want all these things, and we don't get anything. We're giving them $150 billion dollars plus, they are going to be—I'll tell you what, if Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it right now because you'll quadruple—this, what's happening in Iran, is a disgrace, and it's going to lead to destruction in large portions of the world.”
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When Trump attempted to sidestep the question, he did so by suggesting he wouldn’t need to know those leaders because President Obama’s campaign against them will have succeeded.
“I’ll tell you honestly, I think by the time we get to office, they’ll all be changed. They’ll be all gone,” he said. Then, after a brief digression about his offer to build a UN headquarters for less than was eventually spent, Trump then reversed his assessment of Obama’s anti-terror efforts. After telling Hewitt that the terror leaders he’d mentioned would be gone by the time of a Trump administration, Trump claimed that the current campaign to take them out isn’t working.
“I will know every detail, and I will have the right plan, not a plan like this where we’re probably going backwards based on everything that I’m hearing, but we’re probably going backwards, zero respect. We have, we are not a respected country, and certainly as it relates to ISIS and what’s going on, and Iran.”
Trump did not explain how the current ineffective plan would result in the elimination of the world’s leading terrorists.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/national-security-trump-strikes-out-again_1025085.html
