"Well, he’s a loose cannon. He’s somebody who has said so many things, and I’m sure he’ll be scrambling and his advisers will be scrambling, but he’s already said all of these things," Ms. Clinton said.

Launching a frontal attack on Donald Trump, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has dubbed the Republican presumptive nominee as a “loose cannon” on which the country cannot take a risk.

Ms. Clinton, who is most likely to lead the Democratic party in the November 8 US presidential elections against Mr. Trump, fired her first salvo against her fellow New Yorker as it became evident that he was now the Republican party’s presumptive nominee.

“I don’t think we can take a risk on a loose cannon like Donald Trump running our country,” Ms. Clinton on wednesday told CNN in a major television interview, the first after the crucial Indiana primary wherein she was defeated by her sole Democratic rival Bernie Sanders in a tight contest.

She is still headed to be the party’s presidential nominee because of her delegate count.

“Donald Trump has said it’s okay for other countries to get nuclear weapons. I think that’s just downright dangerous.

He has said wages are too high. I think we need to have a raise for the American people, raise the minimum wage, get wages back going up,” Ms. Clinton said.

“I think when he says women should be punished for having abortions, that is just beyond anything that I can imagine, I think most women can imagine,” she said in response to a question.

“Well, he’s a loose cannon. He’s somebody who has said so many things, and I’m sure he’ll be scrambling and his advisers will be scrambling, but he’s already said all of these things,” Ms. Clinton argued.

“He says climate change is a Chinese hoax, and I think it’s real, and we’ve got to pull the world together to deal with it. So you can go down a long list, some of which he’s tried to bob and weave a little bit, but I think it’s a risk.

I think he is a loose cannon and loose cannons tend to misfire,” she said.

Ms. Clinton said she is running her own campaign to become the president of the country and not against Mr. Trump. “I’m not running against him. I’m running my own campaign. I’m running to become president, to really deal with the economy, get it working again, take on all the barriers that stand in the way of people of people getting ahead. I have a very clear mission in this campaign,” she said.

A day earlier, Mr. Trump had criticised her husband and former US president Bill Clinton for signing NAFTA trade deal.

“The economy does better when we have a Democrat in the White House. We saw the stark difference between my husband’s presidency and George W Bush who went back to trickle down economics which is also what Donald Trump is advocating,” she said.

“Then we saw Barack Obama have to rescue the economy from the failed economic policies of the Republicans, so I’m more than happy to take that issue on,” she said.