Donald Trump called Monday for a Cold War-style mobilization against “radical Islamic terror,” repeating and repackaging calls for strict immigration controls — including a new ideological litmus test for Muslim visitors and migrants — and blaming the current level of worldwide terrorist attacks on President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
In a grab bag of promises to battle the Islamic State organization together with Russia and anyone else who wants to join the fight, the Republican nominee underlined the need to improve intelligence and shut down militant propaganda, recruiting and financing.
But he provided few specifics on how he would expand such efforts beyond those already underway.
“My administration will aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS,” Trump said in a speech in Youngstown, Ohio, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “International cooperation to cut off their funding, expanded intelligence sharing and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting … It’s got to be stopped.”
The speech was one in a series of prepared remarks the Republican presidential nominee has scheduled, amid criticism of controversial off-the-cuff policy pronouncements that he has later dismissed as jokes or sarcasm. Reading directly from a TelePrompter, a subdued Trump rarely departed from his script.
The principal new initiative was what Trump called “extreme vetting” for “any hostile attitude towards our country or its principles, or who believed sharia law should supplant American law. … Those who did not believe in our Constitution or who support bigotry and hatred will not be admitted for immigration into our country.”
“In the Cold War,” he said, “we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. … I call it extreme, extreme vetting.”
Current U.S. naturalization law requires adherence to “the principles of the Constitution of the United States” and rejects advocates of a variety of ideological positions, and those with proclivities, in the judgment of immigration officials, to commit various crimes.
In a semantic softening of his previous position restricting immigrants or visitors from Muslim-majority countries, Trump said he would “temporarily suspend immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism.”
As he has in the past, Trump said he would keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that Obama has unsuccessfully tried to close for more than seven years. “Drone strikes will remain part of our strategy, but we will also seek to capture high-value targets to gain needed information to dismantle their organizations. Foreign combatants will be tried in military commissions,” he said.
Obama initially did away with the commissions, and then reauthorized them during his administration, but they have been rarely used. In an interview last week with the Miami Herald, Trump said he would also use the commissions to try U.S. citizens, which is currently prohibited under law. He did not mention that possibility in his speech.