Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s plan for Syria would “lead to world war three” because of the potential for conflict with military forces from nuclear-armed Russia.

In an interview focused largely on foreign policy, the Republican presidential nominee said defeating Islamic State was a higher priority than persuading than Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down, playing down a long-held goal of US policy.

Trump questioned how his Democratic opponent would negotiate with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin after having demonized him; blamed Barack Obama for a downturn in US relations with the Philippines under its new president, Rodrigo Duterte; bemoaned a lack of Republican unity behind his candidacy and said he would easily win the election if the party leaders supported him.

“If we had party unity, we couldn’t lose this election to Hillary Clinton,” he said.

On Syria’s civil war, Trump said Clinton could drag the US into a world war with a more aggressive posture toward resolving the conflict.

Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone and “safe zones” on the ground to protect noncombatants. Some analysts fear that protecting those zones could bring the US bring into direct conflict with Russian fighter jets.

“What we should do is focus on Isis. We should not be focusing on Syria,” said Trump as he dined on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort. “You’re going to end up in world war three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton,” Trump said.

“You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk,” he said.

Trump said Assad is much stronger now than he was three years ago. He said getting Assad to leave power was less important than defeating Isis.

“Assad is secondary, to me, to Isis,” he said.

On Russia, Trump again knocked Clinton’s handling of US-Russian relations while secretary of state and said her harsh criticism of Putin raised questions about “how she is going to go back and negotiate with this man who she has made to be so evil”, if she wins the presidency.

On the deterioration of ties with the Philippines, Trump aimed his criticism at Obama, saying the president “wants to focus on his golf game” rather than engage with world leaders.

Since assuming office, Duterte has expressed open hostility towards the US, rejecting criticism of his violent anti-drug clampdown, using an expletive to describe Obama and telling the US not to treat his country “like a dog with a leash”.

The Obama administration has expressed optimism that the two countries can remain firm allies.

Trump said Duterte’s latest comments showed “a lack of respect for our country”.

The interview comes two weeks before the 8 November election, with Trump trailing badly in the polls. He repeated his assertion that the “media is rigging the polls” and said his supporters were upset with the leadership of the Republican party.

“The people are very angry with the leadership of this party, because this is an election that we will win 100% if we had support from the top. I think we’re going to win it anyway.”

He said if he wins he would not consider putting Democrats in his cabinet but would work with them on legislation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump theatrically touched down at a rally on the tarmac of an airport in Sanford, Florida, to wild applause from supporters. The Republican nominee appeared to have lost his usually jauntiness as he emerged from the plane, waving to the crowd and wearing a camouflage make America Great again hat.

Trump touched on many of his usual themes, railing against a rigged political system, bemoaning the liberal bias of the dishonest media and inaccurate pollsters, and pausing occasionally to praise the size of his crowd.

“This was supposed to be a rally in that hangar but after about an hour they realized that wasn’t going to work that well,” Trump said, in reference to the crowd size.

During the speech he chastised Obama for warning that Trump’s rigged election claims were a threatened to delegitimize the vote, and at one point attempted to impersonate the president, saying: “He said: ‘This is a threat to our system. This is terrible. This is a threat.’” He said he had watched a clip of Obama claiming the election was rigged from 2008 while watching his friend Sean Hannity’s Fox News show the previous night.

“He’s basically saying that the whole thing is fixed before he won his first race; he was talking about voting and he said: ‘Remember, I come from Chicago, you know, I mean, I know,’” Trump said, again dropping his voice to impersonate Obama.

Trump also acknowledged his fervent supporters.



“I love the signs behind me, ‘Blacks for Trump.’ ‘Blacks For Trump.’ You watch,” he said. It appeared that the supporter holding one of the Blacks for Trump signs was a white woman.

Reuters contributed to this report