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Trump Calls For 'Extreme Vetting' to Screen 'Hostile Attitudes'

Donald Trump outlined his plan to fight ISIS in a national security speech Monday, tying the group's spread to policies championed by Hillary Clinton and proposing bold new reforms to prevented radicalized immigrants from entering the country.
Image: Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump Campaigns In Youngstown, Ohio
YOUNGSTOWN, OH - AUGUST 15: Republican candidate for President Donald Trump holds a campaign event at the Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University on August 15, 2016 in Youngstown, Ohio. In his address, Trump laid out his foreign policy vision for America. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)) / Getty Images

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Donald Trump on Monday promised “extreme vetting” of immigrants, including ideological screening that that will allow only those who “share our values and respect our people” into the United States.

Among the traits that Trump would screen for are those who have “hostile attitudes” toward the U.S., those who believe “Sharia law should supplant American law,” people who “don’t believe in our Constitution or who support bigotry and hatred.”

Those who Trump will allow in are “only those who we expect to flourish in our country.”

The Republican nominee did not disavow his prior proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from the United States “until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.” The position, released in December 2015, is still on the nominee’s website. He did, however, call for a temporary suspension “from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism” in order to succeed in the goal of extreme ideological vetting.

It’s unclear whether or not this is in addition to, or in place of, his original temporary ban. In the past, as Trump has proposed a regional and country-based ban, he’s called it an “expansion” on his original ban — not a scaling back.

Trump did not name any countries that would be included in the regional ban, but said that should he be elected, his administration will ask the Department of State to “identify a list of regions where adequate screening cannot take place. There are many such regions,” Trump said. "We will stop processing visas from those areas until such time as it is deemed safe to resume based on new circumstances or new procedures.” One of Trump’s long standing complaints about Syrian, and other, refugees, is that they are not sufficiently vetted and, because of that, could be a “Trojan Horse.”

Trump’s speech about combating radical Islamic terror in the age of ISIS referred consistently back to the Cold War, painting the fight against the radical Islam ideology as the new Cold War — a battle that Trump says Clinton has proven she’s not equipped to handle. He modified his claim that Obama and Clinton are the “founders of ISIS” to say that “the rise of ISIS is the direct result of policy decisions made by President Obama and Secretary Clinton.”

The speech was also rife with inconsistencies about Trump’s own positions on issues ranging from pulling troops out of Iraq to intervening in Libya.

While Trump maintained that he had been consistently opposed to the Iraq war since before it began, he told Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that he was for invading Iraq. “Yeah, I guess so,” he told the radio host when asked. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Despite being faced with his past comments on the subject, Trump has continued to use the line that he was always against Iraq on the campaign trail, in interviews, and in speeches to draw a judgement contrast with Hillary Clinton.

Trump lambasted Clinton and Obama for the “reckless” way they got out of Iraq and for telegraphing their plans to the enemy; however Trump said in 2008 that he’d get out of Iraq “right now” and pushed for McCain in 2007 to “promise to get us out of Iraq faster.”

But attacks on Clinton’s record and judgement also appeared to have a gender element. Trump ally and advisor Rudy Giuliani wondered aloud if Clinton’s miles logged on diplomatic visits wouldn’t have been better spent at home considering the state of the world she left behind after her years heading the State Department. Those trips, Giuliani said, “amounted to a much worse world than the one she was given. Maybe it would’ve been better if she had stayed home.” Trump asserted that Clinton lacked the “mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS.”