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In Foreign Policy Speech, Hillary Eviscerates The Donald
This is a preview from Friday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton gave a major foreign policy speech in San Diego. If you’re interested in seeing it for yourself, the video is here, and the transcript is here. However, we watched it all (35 minutes worth) so you don’t have to (and you damn well better freakin’ love us for it). In the speech Clinton laid out how her ideas for a “smart and disciplined foreign policy” contrast with Donald Trump’s, which she called “dangerously incoherent” and “not even really ideas – just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.”
Clinton actually was able to execute a merciless takedown of Trump’s general disconnectedness from reality, without her trademark shrillness. She also presented a plan that was designed to sound calm and reasonable with little that anyone could strongly disagree with. (Of course, it falls apart on the details.)
The entire speech was filled with brutal shots at Trump, but there were a couple of stunners up front: “He is not just unprepared – he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability, and immense responsibility,” and “This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.” (And then she stomped on his corpse.)
Clinton listed her qualifications: She “wrestled with the Chinese” over a climate deal, negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, worked out a nuclear weapons reduction with the Ruskies, arranged international sanctions against Iran, and “stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world.” (Again: Those pesky details…)
She set out her foreign policy plan thusly: Strength at home (infrastructure spending, education spending, blah, blah, blah), strong alliances, “embrac[ing] all the tools of American power” (whatever the hell that means), being “firm but wise with our rivals,” and an unspecified plan for terrorism.
Clinton also appealed to American exceptionalism, quoted Lincoln, played the Bin Laden card, and said all the calm, reasonable sounding things that her focus group testing told her she needed to say. It was a pretty solid speech. Unfortunately it came out of the mouth of Hillary Clinton.
This is a preview from Friday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
Published in Foreign Policy
Speaking of Fred, I notice he just dropped out. Wonder if he will come back.
Once again, Franco, another one right between the eyes! I may write you in on the ballot.
Joined you
likewise
Fred, Fred.
I have been reading “Daily Shot” since you first rolled it out. It was a very good thing that I got to meet you last year in Nashville. Now when I read “Daily Shot” I can hear your voice in my head.
I think you have done a great job of maintaining a consistent tone in the “Daily Shot.” I think that would be a very hard task for me, and I appreciate that you bring it every day. Consistently. I know that what I am reading is going to range from sardonic to sarcastic.
So, knowing to expect sardonic or sarcastic going in, I fully expect to see some statements that would read very differently if they were read with a neutral tone and taken at face value.
Occasional readers, or readers with a chip on their shoulder, or readers with an especially emotional dislike for the subject, can all be understood when they missed your tone and took the headline at face value.
Regular readers know your intense dislike for former Secretary Clinton, and we share that view.
Don’t be discouraged by this little dust-up. Keep it up at the “Daily Shot.” I enjoy it, daily.
Thanks.
Thank you. I really needed that.