US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday slammed US Republican rival Donald Trump for saying that the week-old effort to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the control of the Islamic State was going badly.
“He’s basically declaring defeat before the battle has even started,” Clinton said at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “He’s proving to the world what it means to have an unqualified commander in chief.”
Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that the “attack on Mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb.”
Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by the US, have mounted a huge assault on the area surrounding the city, the last stronghold of Islamic State forces in Iraq. They have retaken about 80 Islamic State-held villages and towns since the offensive was launched on Oct. 16, but have yet to move on the city itself.
Trump reiterated his position during a rally on Monday in St Augustine, where he also urged supporters to vote early and declared his campaign was winning the election.
“So now we’re bogged down in Mosul. The enemy is much tougher than they thought. They’ve had a lot of time to get ready,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible, horrible situation that’s going on. Why did we have to tell them we’re going in?”
The operation could last weeks, or even months. The Islamic State on Monday mounted counterattacks across the country against the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces, trying to deflect attention away from the Mosul campaign.
Trump last week suggested during this year’s final presidential debate that the US-backed attack on Mosul was orchestrated to help Clinton in her White House bid.
With just two weeks to go until the election, Clinton, US President Barack Obama’s first-term secretary of state, leads the New York businessman in national opinion polls. Both candidates have been focusing on a small set of political swing states that could decide the contest.
Seeking to cement a wide advantage she holds with women voters, Clinton enlisted the help of firebrand US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who blasted Trump over allegations he tried to grope or kiss several women without their consent over a 20-year span.
“He thinks that because he has a mouthful of Tic Tacs that he can force himself on any woman within groping distance,” Warren told a raucous crowd of 4,000 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. “Well, I’ve got news for you, Donald Trump. Women have had it with guys like you.”
At least 10 women have said Trump made unwanted sexual advances, including groping or kissing, in incidents from the early 1980s to 2007, according to reports in various news outlets.
Trump has denied the women’s allegations, calling them “totally and absolutely false” and promising on Saturday last week that he would sue his accusers.
Warren’s mention of Tic Tac mint candies referred to a moment in a 2005 video that surfaced earlier this month in which Trump was heard boasting about groping and kissing women.
Warren also referred to Trump calling Clinton “a nasty woman” at last week’s debate, a phrase that quickly caught fire on social media, sparking hashtags and T-shirts.
“Get this, Donald, nasty women are tough,” Warren said. “Nasty women are smart, and nasty women vote. And on Nov. 8, we nasty women are gonna march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever.”
Clinton praised Warren for taking the fight to Trump.
“She gets under his [Trump’s] thin skin like nobody else,” Clinton said.
Warren is one of a handful of high-profile surrogate campaigners helping Clinton in the final weeks of the race.
In California, Obama raised money for his former top diplomat and joked on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show that he laughed most of the time when he saw Trump on TV.
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