US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to prevent terrorist attacks on US soil includes a “screening test” meant to allow entrance only to immigrants “who we expect to flourish in our country.”
“In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today,” Trump said on Monday afternoon in a national security-focused speech at Youngstown State University in Ohio.
“I call it extreme vetting. I call it extreme. Extreme vetting. Our country has enough problems. We don’t need more and these are problems like we’ve never had before,” he said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Trump also said he plans to halt immigration from nations with a “history of exporting terrorism” until new procedures are implemented by the US government to properly screen applications from those parts of the world.
He also sharply attacked Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as “unfit” for commander-in-chief duties, saying she does not have the “stamina” to deal with threats to national security like the Islamic State group.
For a week, Trump has been laying the groundwork for contrasting his own approach to countering the Islamic State group with Democrats, calling US President Barack Obama the group’s “founder” and Clinton the “cofounder.”
“The rise of ISIS is the direct result of policy decisions made by President Obama and Secretary Clinton,” Trump said, using an acronym for the group. “It is time for a new approach.”
Trump also said that he would end US involvement in nation-building and focus on halting the spread of Muslim terrorism.
“All actions should be oriented around this goal, and any country which shares this goal will be our ally,” he said. “We cannot always choose our friends, but we can never fail to recognize our enemies.”
Potential allies in the fight against the Islamic State include Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Russia, Trump said.
NATO, which he has criticized as “obsolete,” was also named as an organization a Trump administration would work closely with.
However, he did not detail tactics or strategy, vowing he “will not telegraph exact military plans to the enemy.”
Singling out Russia, Trump said that the US should “find common ground” with leaders in Moscow in the fight against the Islamic State group.
A key problem has been separating out rebels worth backing from those allied with al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
“The Obama administration is trying like crazy to do that,” said Andrew Tabler, who studies Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The problem is finding terms you would find acceptable.”
The Clinton campaign responded to Trump’s immigrant-vetting proposal in harsh terms.
“This so-called policy cannot be taken seriously,” senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “How can Trump put this forward with a straight face when he opposes marriage equality and selected as his running mate the man who signed an anti-LGBT law in Indiana? It’s a cynical ploy to escape scrutiny of his outrageous proposal to ban an entire religion from our country and no one should fall for it.”
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