September 7, 2016

Trump Attacks Clinton as “Trigger-Happy and Unstable” in Foreign Policy Speech

He also promised a “new foreign policy”—but no new policy ideas.

Evan Vucci/AP

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“Trigger-happy, “unstable,” and “reckless” are charges often leveled against Donald Trump, but the GOP nominee attempted to fling those insults back at Hillary Clinton during a speech on foreign policy and national security in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and high-profile Trump surrogate, also sought to turn the tables on Clinton during his introduction. “His temperament is solid,” Flynn said of Trump, arguing that Clinton is in fact the candidate whose temperamental fitness should be questioned.

The scripted speech was the second military-themed event Trump has done in the past 24 hours as he and Clinton gear up for a “Commander-in-Chief Forum” to be hosted in New York on Wednesday night. But while Trump promised a “new foreign policy” during the speech in Philadelphia, neither event revealed any new policy ideas. At a town-hall-style event with Flynn on Tuesday that supposedly focused on veterans, Trump spoke only briefly about veterans’ issues and referred the audience to the existing 10-point plan on his website. Wednesday’s speech combined his now-familiar complaints about Clinton’s foreign policy with stock conservative defense policy ideas. Those included a call to end the cap on defense spending known as sequestration (President Barack Obama has unsuccessfully tried to remove that cap in previous budgets), boost troop levels, build more ships and airplanes, and pour money into missile defense systems.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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