Hillary Clinton slammed Donald Trump for his foreign policy, saying he would be a dangerous commander in chief. | Getty Clinton warns electing Trump would be 'historic mistake' 'He is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes,' the former secretary of state declares.

Hillary Clinton torched Donald Trump on Thursday, completely overlooking Bernie Sanders as she cast the presumptive Republican nominee as a dangerous commander in chief whose election would be “a historic mistake.”

“Americans aren’t just electing a president in November, we’re choosing our next commander in chief, the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death,” Clinton said during a much-hyped foreign policy speech in San Diego. “And like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job.”


In what was her most forceful critique of the man she’s likely to spar with this fall — though she has yet to win enough pledged delegates to claim the Democratic nomination — Clinton derided the billionaire businessman for his controversial rhetoric, be it from his tweets or what he says in front of the cameras.

“The stakes in global statecraft are infinitely higher and complex than the world of luxury hotels. We all know the tools Donald Trump brings to the table: bragging, mocking, composing nasty tweets. I'm willing to bet he's writing a few right now,” the former secretary of state said. “But those tools won't do the trick. Rather than solving global crises, he would create new ones.”

Trump, in fact, had tweeted his latest attack at Clinton just minutes before that comment. “Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter!” he wrote. “She doesn't even look presidential!”

The real estate mogul had also offered a prebuttal to Clinton’s speech, writing in a series of tweets that she “has zero talent,” “should not be president” and that Sanders was right when he suggested she was unqualified to be president “because she suffers from BAD judgement.”

Trump also questioned her temperament and decision-making before warning that Clinton was “getting ready to totally misrepresent my foreign policy positions.”

Clinton returned Trump’s attack-line questioning her temperament, declaring him “temperamentally unfit” for the White House while also slamming his “dangerously incoherent” ideas — if you can call them that.

“They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies,” she said. “He is not just unprepared, he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.”

Clinton expressed her support of President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, arguing that the accord made the U.S. safer while questioning Trump’s experience and knowledge of the deal.

“You know, there's no risk of people losing their lives if you blow up a golf course deal,” she said. “But it doesn't work like that in world affairs.”

She blasted his “loose talk” of banning Muslims from entering the U.S., remarking that it plays into the hands of terrorists and demonizes a large portion of the world’s population.

“It alienates the very countries we need to help us win in this fight. A Trump presidency would embolden ISIS. We cannot take that risk,” she said. “This isn't reality television. This is actual reality.”

Defeating terrorists and protecting Americans at home requires “more than empty talk and a handful of slogans,” Clinton said, continuing her verbal assault. “It takes a real plan, real experience and real leadership. Donald Trump lacks all three.”

Clinton implored Americans to think about the impact a President Trump would have on future generations.

“He is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into war just because somebody got under his very thin skin,” she said.

Clinton sent her speechwriters an outline of what she wanted to say 10 days ago and, after her foreign policy advisers collaborated with them to create the initial draft, spent the final few days honing her remarks, a Clinton aide said.

During a rally in Sacramento on Wednesday, Trump claimed he saw a copy of Clinton’s forthcoming speech. “And it was such lies about my foreign policy that they said I want Japan to get nuclear weapons,” he said. “Give me a break.”

Trump, however, suggested during an April interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that Japan should defend itself against North Korea, “including with nukes.” That followed his comment during a March town hall with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in which he argued that Japan would eventually arm itself with nuclear weapons anyway, calling it “only a question of time.”

And while Clinton did highlight Trump’s call for arming Japan with nuclear weapons, she didn’t stop there, also noting his calls for waterboarding as a torture tactic, his neutral stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what she mocked as an apparent obsession with foreign dictators, including Kim Jong Un of North Korea and Vladimir Putin of Russia.

“Now I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants. I just wonder how anyone could be so wrong about who America's real friends are,” she said. “Because it matters. If you don't know exactly who you're dealing with, men like Putin will eat your lunch.”

Trump’s suggestion that America is a weak embarrassment with a disastrous military are the words of someone who doesn’t know America, according to the former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, who contrasted her experience with the reality star’s.

“Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States. Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry but America’s entire arsenal,” Clinton said. “Do we want him making those calls? Someone thin-skinned and quick to anger who lashes out at the smallest criticism?”

“He has no ideas on education, no ideas on innovation. He has a lot of ideas about who to blame, but no clue about what to do,” she said. “None of what Donald Trump is offering will make America stronger at home. And that would make us weaker in the world.”

Clinton urged voters not to let anybody tell them America isn’t great because Trump has it wrong. She also outlined two very different paths that come with either the election of Trump or her — one based on anger, fear and the notion that America is weak and in decline; the other based on a hopeful, generous and confident America that has always been great.

“Making Donald Trump our commander in chief would be a historic mistake and it would undo so much of the work that Republicans and Democrats alike have done over many decades to make America stronger and more secure,” she said. “It would set back our standing in the world more than anything in recent memory, and it would fuel an ugly narrative about who we are, that we’re fearful, not confident, that we want to let others determine our future for us instead of shaping our own destiny. That’s not the America I know and love.”

