“I know how hard this job is, and I know that we need steadiness as well as strength and smarts in it, and I have concluded he is not qualified to be president of the United States,” Hillary Clinton said during an appearance on CNN Thursday. | Getty Clinton: Trump is 'not qualified' to be president

Donald Trump is unqualified to be president, Hillary Clinton said Thursday, not mincing words regarding the man she will likely challenge for the White House this fall.

“I know how hard this job is, and I know that we need steadiness as well as strength and smarts in it, and I have concluded he is not qualified to be president of the United States,” Clinton told CNN’s Chris Cuomo in an interview Thursday.


“And I think in this past week, whether it’s attacking Great Britain; praising the leader of North Korea, a despotic dictator who has nuclear weapons; whether it is saying pull out of NATO; let other countries have nuclear weapons,” Clinton began, “the kinds of positions he is stating and the consequences of those positions and even the consequences of his statements are not just offensive to people, they are potentially dangerous.”

Clinton’s comments are an escalation of past criticisms she’s launched at Trump — she called him a “loose cannon” and slammed his “reckless, risky talk” earlier this month — and mirror a spat she had with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over judgment and temperament. Trump himself has said he will use Sanders' attack lines against Clinton in the general election.

After suggesting an act of terrorism is responsible for the Egyptian plane that went missing early Thursday morning at the outset of the interview — though she also cautioned that an investigation would have to determine how — Clinton primarily focused on Trump as she made a case for who would be the better commander-in-chief.

EgyptAir Flight 804, a plane en route to Cairo from Paris, disappeared from a radar early Thursday morning as it flew over the Mediterranean Sea. Clinton said the plane’s abrupt absence “shines a very bright light” on threats the world faces from organized terrorist groups, including the Islamic State.

“I think it reinforces the need for American leadership. The kind of smart, steady leadership that only America can provide, working with our allies, our partners, our friends in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere,” she said. “Because we have to have a concerted effort that brings to bear both domestic resources, sharing of intelligence, take a hard look at airport security one more time. Whatever needs to be done must be done. The world depends upon air travel. We can’t allow it to be interrupted or people be intimidated.”

The entire world is listening and watching the U.S. presidential candidates, Clinton continued, firing another shot at Trump for his rhetoric.

“When you say we’re gonna bar all Muslims, you are sending a message to the Muslim world and you’re also sending a message to the terrorists because we now do have evidence, we have seen how Donald Trump is being used to essentially be a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism,” Clinton said. “So, I think if you go through many of his irresponsible, reckless, dangerous comments, it's not just somebody saying something off the cuff. We all misstate things. We all, you know, may not be as careful in phrasing what we say. This is a pattern. It’s a pattern that has gone on now for months.”

Clinton said Trump’s behavior, combined with his rhetoric and policies, “adds up to a very troubling picture.” Though she has begun to focus more on Trump in recent weeks since he’s all but sewn up the Republican nomination, she is still engaged in a bitter primary against Sanders — but not if you ask her.

“I will be the nominee for my party,” she said matter-of-factly. “That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.”

And, despite the bitter infighting over the chaos at the Nevada Democratic convention last weekend with angry Sanders supporters who threatened the state party chair and her family, Clinton expressed confidence that the party will unite after she wins the nomination.

“About 40 percent of my supporters said they would never support him,” Clinton said, reflecting on polls conducted around the time she suspended her 2008 campaign and endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama. “So I worked really hard to make the case, as I'm sure Sen. Sanders will, that whatever differences we might have, they pale in comparison to the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Name an issue you care about, domestic or international, and clearly we are much closer, Sen. Sanders supporters and mine, than either of us is with Donald Trump.”