Donald Trump outlined his plans for defeating ISIS in a speech on Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, calling for “ideological test” and “extreme vetting,” to prevent radical Islamic terrorists from entering the country.
Mr. Trump went on to say that Hillary Clinton does not have mental or physical ability to defeat ISIS, and called himself the country’s “greatest champion.”
Throughout the speech, Trump made multiple references to the Cold War and called for Cold War tactics like the ideological testing to defeat ISIS.
The GroundTruth Project’s Charles Sennott cautioned against Trump’s Cold War like fear mongering on Boston Public Radio Monday. “What Trump is selling is fear, and I think fear is one of the things that can really hurt your own underpinning of your own strategy for how you are really going to go after terrorism,” Sennott said.
Sennott urged listeners to remember that our country and the world have survived greater threats than ISIS. “We’ve had World War II, we had World War I, we had the Vietnam War, we’ve had much worse conflicts, much more intractable enemies than the one we face now.That’s not to diminish the threat the ISIS brings,” Sennott said.
Politicians along with national security and Middle East experts continue to question if Trump has enough Knowledge of the region to properly inform his plan for eradicating ISIS. Sennott says he does not. “I just don’t have a sense he has it,” he said.
Charles Sennott is a WGBH News contributor and co-founder of the GroundTruth Project. To hear more from his interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
