Donald Trump talks about Hillary Clinton in Virginia on Monday. Trump: 'I am the law and order candidate' The presumptive GOP nominee's comments came just days after a gunman killed five police officers.

Hillary Clinton can add the title “secretary of the status quo” to her political résumé, according to Donald Trump, who on Monday also bestowed another moniker upon himself: “the law and order candidate.”

“We must maintain law and order at the highest level or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent,” he said during a speech in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in which he heaped praise upon America’s law enforcement officers. “We will cease to have a country. I am the law and order candidate.”


Trump’s comments came just days after a gunman killed five police officers and injured nine in an attack in downtown Dallas. That shooting came at the end of a rally organized to mourn the shooting deaths of two black men, one in Louisiana and one in Minnesota, at the hands of police officers.

“Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is weak, ineffective, pandering, and as proven by her recent email scandal which was an embarrassment not only to her but to the entire nation as a whole,” Trump continued. “Not only am I the law and order candidate, but I am also the candidate of compassion, believe it. The candidate of compassion.”

Trump’s remarks backing America’s law enforcement officers came at the top of a planned speech in which he outlined plans to fix health care for U.S. military veterans and offered a 10-point proposal to reform the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs. The Manhattan billionaire’s plan includes proposals to allow the secretary of Veterans Affairs to more easily fire department employees as well as the establishment of a White House hotline, answered not by a computer but by a human being, where veterans could report complaints about the department. Any complaint left unaddressed would be brought to Trump himself, the candidate said, so that it could be dealt with personally by the president.

“Veterans should come first in the country they fought to protect. They fought hard to protect us. They are going to come first in a Trump administration,” he said. “They will be a part of America first. It will be America first from now on. America first.”

The Manhattan businessman contrasted his plan for reform with Clinton’s history of controversy, recalling not just the recently concluded FBI investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state, but also the Clinton Global Initiative’s ties to foreign governments.

“We need to clean up the corruption in government, and Hillary Clinton will never be able to do it. She’s incompetent and has proven time and time again that she doesn’t have what it takes. Doesn’t have it,” he said. “Crooked Hillary Clinton, sadly, is the secretary of the status quo, and wherever Hillary Clinton goes, corruption and scandal follow. Just look at her life.”

Criticizing the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges against Clinton over the email scandal, Trump called the former secretary of state’s actions “willful, intentional and unlawful.” He told the assembled crowd at the Westin Hotel that in Clinton’s interview with the FBI, which occurred over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, she was under oath. That statement drew gasps from the crowd, even though it is illegal to lie to the FBI even if one is not under oath.

As he has in the past, Trump accused Clinton of attempting to cover up her guilt by deleting emails and said “she’s probably the most surprised person that she was able to get away with it.”

“Hard to believe what’s going on with our country” he said. “The fact that she got away with all of this could be her single most impressive accomplishment. To me it is. It’s her greatest accomplishment.”

The presumptive Republican nominee was preceded at his rally by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who likewise praised law enforcement.

“We need a president who will once again put law and order at the top of the priority of the presidency in this country,” Christie said. “Our police officers, the men and women who stand each day to protect us need to understand that the president of the united states and his administration will give them the benefit of the doubt, not always believe that what they’ve done is somehow wrong.”

