Introduced Monday by a Cold War-era veteran who faced nuclear war, Hillary Clinton gave a sober speech at Kent State — not to strike fear into the electorate — she said, but to draw attention to Donald Trump’s own nagging issue: His temperament and fitness to be commander in chief.
With a nagging email investigation drawing attention away from her opponent’s self-inflicted blunders, Clinton attempted to reset the presidential campaign to a most worrisome issue: National security.
“So in these last days, let’s not get distracted from the real choice in this election and the consequences for your future,” Clinton said. Her comments came just four days after FBI Director James Comey, in an unprecedented move, told Republicans that the bureau is checking a new batch of government emails that may or may not ensnare Clinton, though the timing has cast doubt days before the election.
Clinton addressed the issue briefly, saying again it was a mistake to house emails on a private server. Then she cast doubt on Trump.
“I have known, for years now, people who ran for president, Republicans and Democrats,” she said. “And I had my differences with Republicans and even Democrats, but I never doubted their fitness to serve.
“Donald Trump is different. And that’s as serious as it gets.”
Speaking to 2,900 mostly faithful fans and a few stragglers, who are turning to (or away from) Trump or Clinton in the last week of the election, Clinton criticized Trump’s character, casting the brash businessman as a threat to world safety.
Launching doubt
Ahead of her speech, the Clinton campaign launched a new attack ad Monday. (The ad can be found at http://bit.ly/2fwxsyb.)
In it, stock footage from another political ad that aired in 1964 shows a little girl picking a daisy before being consumed by a nuclear mushroom cloud. The threat was real for an entire generation.
“I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again,” Monique Corzilius Luiz, the little girl now grown, says in Clinton’s new ad. “And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary.”
Bruce Blair underscored that concern at KSU.
“Donald Trump would single-handedly have the power to launch a nuclear strike on his own,” said Blair, who came moments from doing just that during the Cold War. The missileer is among 10 who have expressed grave concerns about Trump.
“When you heard from Bruce Blair,” Clinton later said, “his story is worth remembering. In October 1973, Blair sat in an underground bunker in Montana, a single order away from nuclear war with Russia.
“They unlocked the safe. They took out the nuclear launch codes and keys. Then strapped into their chairs to brace for the shockwaves that would come if a Russian warhead detonated above them,” Clinton said, painting a grim picture.
The order never came. “But when Bruce looks at Donald Trump with that hair-trigger temper and he thinks about what it felt like inside that bunker that night,” Clinton said, pausing slightly, “as I’ve said many times: A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Clinton said Trump has shown his thin skin throughout the election: “when he’s gotten a tough question from a reporter, when he’s challenged in a debate, when he sees a protester at a rally, when he’s confronted with his own words.”
“Imagine him in the oval office dealing with a real crisis. Imagine his advisers afraid to tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, racing against his legendary short attention span to lay out life and death choices too complex to be reduced to a single tweet,” Clinton said as the crowd, no longer able control itself, cheered against Trump.
Ash and hope
Clinton reminded the crowd how the image of Ground Zero, as the ash and dust settled on New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, was forever burned into her memory. She recalled first responders, a makeshift command center, thick smoke and — she later learned — a 10-minute phone call Trump made to a New York television station.
“Even on that horrible day, when thousands of people lost their lives, he couldn’t stop himself from pointing out that now, because the towers had fallen, a building he owned was the tallest in lower Manhattan,” Clinton said. “What kind of person brags at a moment like that?”
Clinton reminded the crowd that Trump has criticized NATO, which has joined America in fighting ISIS, while praising some of America’s adversaries. “He has picked fights with our friends — I mean the president of Mexico, the British prime minister, the German chancellor, pretty much the entire nation of Japan. And he even picked a fight with the Pope.
“At the same time he is praising tyrants and dictators like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un in North Korea and Bashar al-Assad for their supposed strong leadership. He even praised the Chinese government for massacring protesters in Tiananmen Square.”
Instead of a “dark and divisive” leader, Clinton said she would champion a “hopeful, inclusive and optimistic” future.
In her vision for America, women are respected, parents supported, veterans honored, marriage is a right, discrimination is wrong and the American Dream is big enough for everyone, she said.
“Let us make clear that we are going to stand up for an America that stands up for all of us,” she concluded. “And we’re going to prove once and for all that love trumps hate.”
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .