At her first press conference in nine months, Hillary Clinton called on Republicans to question their nominee’s remarks at the commander-in-chief forum Wednesday.
Donald Trump suggested he would fire generals and replace them with his own picks, praised Vladimir Putin and said America’s response to global terrorism should be to take the oil.
“Every Republican holding or seeking office in this country should be asked if they agree with Donald Trump about these statements,” Clinton said in her speech.
Mark Fraley, chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party, said Republican officials have a responsibility to distance themselves from a candidate who supports Putin and disrespects our nation’s generals.
“Trump is a person who will speak with a very friendly message to Latinos, specifically Mexicans, and then later that day have a completely different message with Republican voters,” Fraley said.
Trump’s only interest is putting attention on himself, and he is willing to take very exotic positions in order to sustain this attention, Fraley said.
On the other hand, William Ellis, chairman of the Monroe County Republican Party, said Trump is simply more upfront than other presidential candidates. Trump admires how Putin inspires the Russian people even though Putin is the leader of an authoritarian state, Ellis said.
“Bad people can be great leaders,” Ellis said.
Additionally, Clinton called out Trump for wanting to fire American generals and replace them with generals of his choosing. If you look at most presidents, including Obama and Bush, they both replaced generals with the people they wanted, Ellis said.
Ellis said he wants to know whether Clinton is taking a pledge not to replace the current generals with her own.
Due to the nature of communication today, Trump is forced to speak in soundbites and in hyperbolic terms, Ellis said. People get bogged down in details, and this manner of speech speaks more to the electorate than it speaks to his opinion of Trump, Ellis said.
“If you can’t say something in 10 to 15 seconds, people don’t listen to you,” Ellis said. “Until we can get through to people, we’ll have to keep doing this.”
