Republican presidential front-runner Donald J. Trump is scheduled to address a rally in Costa Mesa Thursday night, one day after pledging to pursue an “America first” foreign policy.
“Under a Trump administration, no American citizen will ever again feel that their needs come second to the citizens of foreign countries,” the businessman said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Trump was invited to speak by the magazine The National Interest, which seeks to promote a fresh debate about the course of American foreign policy.
Trump called the nation’s foreign policy under President Barack Obama and his first-term Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, “reckless, rudderless and aimless.”
“Our foreign policy goals must be based on America’s core national security interests,” Trump said, going on to pledge to defeat radical Islam in the Middle East and focus on stability in the region, not nation building.
Trump also vowed to “seek common ground based on shared interests” with Russia and China.
Trump’s criticisms of American foreign policy included his beliefs that the nation’s resources are overextended; many of the nation’s allies aren’t paying their fair share; allies fear they can’t depend on us; and the nation’s rivals no longer respect us.
“All of this is going to change when I am president,” Trump said. “America is going to be strong again. America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again.”
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Clinton supporter, responded by saying, “I’ve never seen such a combination of simplistic slogans and contradictions and misstatements in one speech.”
“Donald Trump’s goal today may have been to convince us that he can be presidential,” said Albright, the second-term secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s administration. “But I truly think that instead of doing that, he just underscored the fact that he is running the most reckless and dangerous presidential campaign in modern history.”
Trump is scheduled to speak in Evansville, Indiana, today, five days before that state’s primary.
On Friday, Trump is scheduled to speak at the California Republican Party Convention in Burlingame, as is one of his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The other candidate for the Republican nomination, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, is scheduled to speak at the convention on Saturday, as is his vice presidential running mate, former Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina.
—City News Service