Battleground ’16: Is Donald ‘Dangerous’?
With roughly 90 days until Election Day, 2016 has entered its homestretch, with the candidates honing their commander-in-chief arguments, delivering high-profile policy speeches — and raising questions as to whether the other poses a danger.
With less than three months until Election Day, 2016 has entered its homestretch, as the candidates hone their commander-in-chief arguments, begin a string of high-profile policy speeches, pay new attention to their ground games, and prepare to stand on the same debate stage.
With less than three months until Election Day, 2016 has entered its homestretch, as the candidates hone their commander-in-chief arguments, begin a string of high-profile policy speeches, pay new attention to their ground games, and prepare to stand on the same debate stage.
Or not.
On Tuesday, GOP nominee Donald Trump suggested that gun owners could stop Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, saying, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks … though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” He and aides quickly followed that the “dishonest media” blew the implied threat out of proportion. The Clinton camp said the comments were “dangerous,” and the U.S. Secret Service tweeted it was “aware” of the comments.
That much of the election has centered on whether a presidential candidate poses a danger, to individuals or the Republic, has little precedent.
On Monday, 50 GOP national security leaders penned a missive against Trump because he “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
“We thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place,” Trump responded to the “failed Washington elite.”
Where he has found success, of a kind, is to fashion a campaign not beholden to facts, that doesn’t just tap into Americans’ anxiety and anger, but foments them.
Sign up for FP’s Editors’ Picks newsletter here to receive Battleground ’16, our take on the presidential race, each Wednesday through November.
Donald Trump: Keep Your Hands Off the Foreign-Policy Ideas I Believe In
The GOP candidate is talking up three important and sensible ideas about America’s role in the world. And he’s going to ruin them.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks … though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
— Donald Trump at a rally Tuesday in North Carolina, after saying Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment
Trump’s Counterattacks on GOP’s ‘Failed Washington Elite’ Miss the Mark
The GOP nominee is brushing aside criticism from dozens of senior Republican foreign policy experts by linking them to miscues that took place after they’d left office.
When 50 GOP national security leaders wrote a letter this week saying they would not vote for Trump because he was a national security threat, the Republican nominee responded in a way that at first seems unlikely: he said thank you. It’s an efficient answer to the steady trickle of Clinton endorsements from retired senior officers and foreign policy experts: argue that they left the world a more dangerous place, and that Clinton would only make it worse.
Trump’s Loose Lips on the Military May Not Sink Support With Veterans
A snapshot into the GOP nominee’s seeming staying power with veterans and service members in swing-state, military-heavy Virginia.
+4, 5, 11
The lead Clinton has opened up in the key states of Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania following both parties’ presidential conventions, according to three new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls. These states are especially crucial for Trump in an electoral map that already favors Clinton.
General Election: Who Speaks For the Military, And Who Should?
The 2016 race has in many ways become about the military, but in ways no one predicted.
PAUL MCLEARY and MOLLY O’TOOLE
Sign up for FP’s Editors’ Picks newsletter here to receive Battleground ’16, our take on the presidential race, each Wednesday through November.
Photo credit: Sara D. Davis/Getty Images
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