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Donald Trump to Lay Out ‘3 Pillars’ of Terrorism Plan, Aides Say Donald Trump’s Terrorism Plan Mixes Cold War Concepts and Limits on Immigrants
(about 5 hours later)
As he continues to face a backlash for calling President Obama and Hillary Clinton the “founders of ISIS,” Donald J. Trump will travel to the battleground state of Ohio on Monday to discuss his plans to fight terrorism and shore up national security. Donald J. Trump on Monday will lay out what aides described as a broad framework for combating global Islamic terrorism, invoking the Cold War era to try new approaches to limiting the influx of immigrants into the country.
The address at Youngstown State University comes as Mr. Trump tries to pivot to serious policy issues from multiple contentious statements. In a speech scheduled for Youngstown, Ohio — a place where the driving concern for voters is the economy more than terrorism — Mr. Trump will call for significant changes in how the United States defines its allies, urge an end to “nation building” and move toward foreign policy “realism.” Mr. Trump also plans to call for working closely with countries where Islamic State terrorism has flourished, seeking to team up with these nations to eradicate it, said Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s policy adviser.
On Sunday, Trump campaign aides previewed his planned speech in a 40-minute conference call with reporters, saying that it would use the Cold War era as a model for the type of ideological fight the United States is waging against the Islamic State. The New York Times was not invited to join, but it was provided with the number and listened to the call. The proposed change in alliances would raise substantial modifications in American foreign policy about what criteria would be used in selecting nations to partner with. And the parallel that he plans to draw between the Cold War and radical Islamic terrorism, his aides said in previewing the speech, suggests a governing ideological bent to combatting the problem.
Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that Mr. Trump would lay out “three pillars” to fighting radical Islamic terrorism. The speech, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s policy adviser, said, would call for a stricter immigration questionnaire for people from nations with ties to terrorism; for new alliances with nations willing to help fight terrorism; and for a move from “nation-building” to foreign policy “realism.” The questionnaire, he added, would require applicants to prove commitment to the ideals of “tolerance” and “pluralism,” but he did not say precisely how such a thing would be enforced. The United States will “consider any nation that will join the fight against it an ally,” Mr. Miller said on a call with reporters before the speech. The Times was not invited to participate in the call, but was able to listen in.
Yet it is unclear whether Mr. Trump will be able to use the speech to focus attention on his policies rather than on the criticism he has faced for some of his personal attacks on opponents. Last week, Mr. Trump delivered a speech aimed at casting himself as a president who could bring new jobs and prosperity to the country. But a day later, he appeared to raise the possibility that gun rights supporters could take matters into their own hands if Mrs. Clinton were elected president and appointed judges who favor stricter gun control measures. As was the case with the Republican presidential nominee’s speech last week on the economy, Mr. Miller portrayed the terrorism address as a road map, with more detailed speeches to follow. Mr. Trump plans to directly tie President Obama and Hillary Clinton to allowing the seeds of the Islamic State terrorist group to flourish before 2011.
The next day, he was again on the defensive for saying that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton had created the Islamic State and that the terrorist group “honors” the president. The speech is also another attempt by aides to Mr. Trump, who favors going off script over teleprompter addresses at his rallies, to redirect his approach to be a more on-message general election candidate.
On Friday morning, Mr. Trump, who had previously hinted that he was being serious in his phrasing, later defended it as “sarcasm.” At a rally in the evening, he added that his statements were “not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.” In the speech, Mr. Trump will call for greater scrutiny in screening immigrants, particularly from countries he has described as “exporters” of terrorism. The plan would be to have people answer a questionnaire that could press them on their commitment to “our basic principles of tolerance and pluralism,” on issues ranging from gay rights to women’s rights, Mr. Miller said. If that is not effective, visas could be banned from certain areas of the world.
“We’re going to make it clear and explicit that just like the Cold War struggle against Communism, our current struggle is against radical Islamic terrorism,” Mr. Miller said. “Just like we did in the Cold War, we’re going to create higher standards for admission than not being a terrorist.”
The speech reflects an effort by the Trump campaign to move past the candidate’s broad call to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States, issued late last year after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and in Paris. He has been heavily criticized for suggesting a religious test for entry into the country, and his aides have sought to change the language to reflect the targeting of regions instead, without being specific. But instead of backing away from the words “Muslim ban” when questioned recently, Mr. Trump described the newer version of his proposal as a Muslim “expansion.”
In his call with reporters, Mr. Miller suggested that a nation’s willingness to help the United States fight against a certain type of terrorism would potentially supersede other interests by which America seeks it allies. He did not say whether such a new form of alliances would preclude traditional foes.
While Mr. Miller said the United States would continue to spread a message of promoting a “better way of life” in countries with oppressive governments that foster the Islamic State, he argued there was a distinction between that and “nation building,” which he associated with Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.
Yet it was President George W. Bush, who opposed such nation building in his 2000 presidential campaign, who became most identified with it after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which Mr. Obama opposed. Preparing for his re-election effort in June 2011, Mr. Obama announced the withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan in a speech in which he said, “America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.”