Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a campaign rally December 2, 2015, in Manassas, Virginia. Trump blames Clinton for the birth of the Islamic State

Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state produced a more turbulent, dangerous Middle East and birthed the Islamic State terrorist group responsible for violent attacks around the world, Donald Trump said Wednesday.

Trump attacked Clinton on one of her strongest resume points, her tenure as America’s chief diplomat, in a much-anticipated speech outlining her deficiencies as a candidate for president. "No secretary of state has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton," he said during the address, held at his Trump SoHo hotel.


Trump contrasted the world before Clinton took over in Foggy Bottom with the one she left behind after stepping down in 2013. Libya and Syria were stable and Iraq was growing safer, Trump said, before Clinton took the reins. Under her watch, Trump said, all three became a haven for extremists as a result of mismanaged American foreign policy. Clinton, Trump said, "opened the Pandora's box of radical Islam."

He accused Clinton of sleeping soundly during the terrorist attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, and of lying to cover up the truth about his death. As secretary of state, the presumptive GOP nominee said, Clinton “managed to almost single-handedly destabilize the entire Middle East.”

But Clinton’s record of destructive foreign policy began much earlier, he said — when she was a senator representing New York. Trump noted that she supported George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq and depose dictator Saddam Hussein — a position she has since disavowed. He reiterated his claim that he ha opposed the war in Iraq from its very onset, an assertion that has been repeatedly been proven untrue.

“ISIS threatens us today because of the decisions Hillary Clinton has made along with President Obama,” Trump said. “In short, Hillary Clinton’s tryout for the presidency has produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another.”