Donald Trump Revealed His Biggest Vulnerability in the General Election
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Donald Trump gave a foreign policy speech in grand, rambling Trump style that left people mostly confused. He gave some great zingers as he went along, and with a mix of contradictions, covered a lot of ground on foreign policy topics, calling out people he thinks did a bad job.
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Coming off of a five state victory in Tuesday's primaries, Trump slammed President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday for what he views as big foreign policy mistakes.
"I challenge anyone to explain the strategic foreign policy vision of Obama-Clinton," he said.
Experts aren't exactly calling this a slam dunk for Trump.
In fact, David Rothkopf, CEO of Foreign Policy Magazine called it "fact-free" and said that the speech was a display of a psychological disorder.
Also CNN's Fareed Zakaria, host of "Global Public Square," a world politics chat show, called it "incoherent" and full of contradictions.
Trump also caught grief from his own party. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina wasn't a huge fan of the speech and thought it could wake the dead.
These are the five times Donald Trump contradicted himself during his foreign policy speech.
1. We should use the Jedi mind trick of being "unpredictable" and "reliable" in our foreign policy.
"We have to be unpredictable," said Trump, " And we have to be unpredictable starting now." Shortly after this statement he gave a new take on America's foreign policy strategy. "To our friends and allies, I say America is going to be strong again," said Trump. "America is going to be reliable again."
2. Muslims are my friends as long as they don't try to come here.
"We're going to be working very closely with our friends in the Muslim world, which are all at risk for violent attacks," said Trump.
You might remember that in December 2015, Trump wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. and cited a "great hatred toward Americans by large segments of the Muslim population."
3. We should get along better with Russia, but not too much.
"And improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only," said Trump. It seems that he wants to be friendly but with a lot of side eye. Maybe frenemies?
Rothkopf told CNN that Trump's negotiation tactics are vague and based on his confidence as a business negotiator. "I think if the objective was to establish that Trump's serious on foreign policy, he failed at every level. This speech was incoherent, it was fact-free, you know he -- his solution to almost everything was, let me handle it. You know, Russia, I'll talk to them."
4. We're getting out of "nation-building business" but we want to stabilize nations.
"We're getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability," said Trump. But Fareed Zakaria told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that nation-building and creating stability in foreign nations is the same thing. "Well how do you do that?" he said. "You get out nation-building in Afghanistan you'll get more instability. You got out of nation-building in Iraq, you got more instability."
5. Like a schoolyard bully taking our lunch money, China will respect us for standing up to them.
"China respects strength and by letting them take advantage of us economically, we have lost all of their respect," Trump said. CNN analyst Andrew Stevens said that Trump's proposed tax on Chinese goods can't happen. "He's talking about slapping a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, that goes against the World Trade Organization rules."
