AP, Washington :A day after sweeping primaries across the Northeast on his march to the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump sought to boost his commander-in-chief credentials with a speech promising to dramatically upend U.S. foreign policy.”‘America first’ will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” Trump said on Wednesday in Washington, reaching back to a World War II-era isolationist slogan. As president, he pledged, he’ll “develop a new foreign policy purpose for our country, one that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace. It’s time to shake the rust off America’s foreign policy.”Trump’s address relied on broad assurances and political rhetoric, covering much of the world without addressing the complexities that one promise introduced to another. His speech, in which he didn’t unveil policy specifics, tied his anti-interventionist and world-wary views to his immigration restrictionism and anti-trade policies, which have been staples of his campaign during his rise in the Republican race.”Our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster. No vision, no purpose, no direction, no strategy,” he said, identifying as one problem U.S. interventions, such as in Iraq and Libya, based on “the dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no interest” in representative government.”The Trump administration will lead a free world that is properly armed and funded-and funded beautifully,” he said, saying he’d boost military spending and focus on combating “radical Islamic terrorism.”Trump’s proposals-which include temporarily banning the entry of Muslims to the United States, forcing Mexico to pay for a wall along its U.S. border, and making Persian Gulf states pay for a “safe zone” in war-torn Syria-have been scorned by many foreign governments and policy experts, yet proven popular with conservative voters.Leading up to the address, given at the Mayflower Hotel, Trump faced pressure to identify who gave him foreign policy advice, and announced a team in March led by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Last month on MSNBC, Trump described himself as his chief foreign policy adviser “because I have a very good brain.”After Tuesday’s voting, Trump has more than three-quarters of the delegates he needs to win the Republican nomination outright, according to Associated Press estimates.Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is now about 90 percent of the way there. Her experience as President Barack Obama’s top diplomat until 2013 helps make her a formidable opponent on the issue of foreign policy: A recent George Washington University Battleground Poll found that even though a generic GOP candidate has an advantage of 48 to 44 percent over Democrats on foreign affairs, Clinton leads Trump by a margin of 60 to 33 percent in that category among voters nationally.
