YOUNGSTOWN – In Ohio Monday, Donald Trump called for “extreme vetting” of immigrants seeking admission to the United States and said his rival lacks the judgment, temperament and stamina to lead the nation.
In a foreign policy speech at Youngstown State University, Trump says people who “do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred” will be barred from entering the country.
But he offered few details about how his plan might work, how long it might last or how taxpayers would foot the bill.
His proposals are the latest version of a policy that began with Trump’s unprecedented call to temporarily block Muslims from immigrating to the United States. That would include a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American. He’s now saying he would apply that standard to people from “terror regions” that he has not named.
Trump also vowed that — as president — he would end “our current strategy of nation-building and regime change” because they don’t work (see video).
His dislike for nation-building is shared by many — including none other than the target of his criticism, President Barack Obama.
In fact it was Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who committed the U.S. to large-scale nation-building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama discarded that strategy while trying to keep enough U.S. influence there to prevent those two countries from crumbling. Obama’s approach may not have worked, but it hardly amounts to Bush-like “nation-building.”
And while Trump argued against nation-building in a foreign policy speech Monday, he suggested something even more grandiose: seizing Iraq’s oil wealth in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.
He also said the U.S. should forge alliances with nations that are willing to join the fight against international terrorist groups like the Islamic State group.
Trump’s speech was aimed at resetting his struggling campaign against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, whose campaign called attention to reports that Trump’s campaign manager had once received payments from the pro-Moscow political party of a former Ukrainian president.
Clinton will be in Cleveland on Wednesday to compare elements of her economic and tax agenda to Trump’s.
The Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign says Clinton will have a 1:15 p.m. rally at John Marshall High School.
Clinton edged Trump 49 percent to 45 percent in Ohio in a Quinnipiac University poll released last week.