Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both got ugly in California on Thursday evening ahead of next week’s primary vote. The state is a crucial one on both sides, with Bernie Sanders throwing all his campaign resources into play. Bern hopes to close the state’s narrow margin and provide some justification for a contested convention. Tuesday’s vote doesn’t hold importance for Trump in an immediate sense, because he’s already secured the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination, he must think ahead towards the general election, however, for Clinton could sweep that state (particularly where Latino voters are concerned) and march ahead to the White House.
In that spirit, Clinton has already moved her mental focus away from Sanders and devoted a portion of her San Diego rally to her main rival. She went further than characterizing Trump as a businessman with no political experience. Instead, she attacked him as a thin-skinned baby, whose tantrum-filled persona makes him “not just unprepared — he’s temperamentally unfit” to hold the highest office in the land. Her mission is to persuade voters that Trump’s angry fingers should be nowhere near the nuclear codes. Beyond Trump’s eternally shouty mood, Clinton has a point. This is the same guy who thought it was a good idea for Japan and South Korea to grab nukes and protect themselves from North Korea. Of course, Trump tried to deny saying this, but too late. Here’s the relevant portion of Clinton’s speech where she attacks Trump’s foreign policy approach.
Trump didn’t take this speech well. When he took the mic in San Jose (where protests got wild again), Trump said, “I watched Hillary today and it was pathetic. It was so sad to watch.” He then launched into his own attack about how President Trump will make sure Clinton is behind bars. She has simply “got to go to jail” after using a private email server while she was Secretary of State. Trump doesn’t know this because of his own research. He admitted, “I have watched so many lawyers on so many different networks … Folks, honestly, she’s guilty as hell.” He doesn’t dig in substantively on the issue, either, so it’s entirely possible that he’s only familiar with the controversy’s most recent development. He’s just a willing candidate of the soundbite age who feels no need to go further. This approach has worked for him so far, and from there, Trump stripped Ted Cruz of his old moniker:
“I want to save that now for Hillary. Liar. Lyin’ Hillary. Liar. Ted Cruz is no longer a liar. We don’t say Lyin’ Ted anymore. We love Ted! We don’t want to say Lyin’ Ted. Lyin’ Crooked Hillary!”
Trump peppered the entirety of his speech with insults such as this one, and he knows exactly why Clinton is a liar:
“She’s a liar. She made up my foreign policy! She said Donald Trump is going to do this, I never said that. And ‘Donald Trump is going to do that.’ A friend of mine was in the room and said, ‘You never said you were going to do that.’ I said that’s right — she’s makes it up. She’s a bad person.”
Trump famously said his main foreign policy adviser was his own “very good brain,” which shows exactly how seriously he takes the subject. And again, he really did say Japan should have nukes because he’s tired of the U.S. military helping out the rest of the world. Trump believes that other countries should stop using our troops or pay for them. Because he’s turned this into an issue of money — Trump is the eternal businessman — nukes would be a simpler solution, according to the Republican nominee. So, Trump is either extremely forgetful (which isn’t impossible), or he’s lying, too. Let’s consider this a brief preview of general election season and brace ourselves for the upcoming storm.
Here’s a video clip of Trump’s anti-Clinton statements in San Diego.