Fox News panel agrees with Hillary Clinton's takedown of Trump, hates that Clinton delivered it
On Thursday night's Fox News Special Report, host Bret Baier took a look at Hillary Clinton's big speech dissecting Donald Trump's "dangerously incoherent" foreign policy, and asked his panel of two conservative columnists — Charles Krauthammer and The Weekly Standard's Steven Hayes — and Washington Post national political correspondent Karen Tumulty to weigh in. If Clinton's speech was half-aimed at #NeverTrump Republicans, this was a test of her strategy. The verdict: Good message, bad messenger.
"Well, I thought the content of it was rather devastating," Krauthammer said when Baier asked him about Clinton's speech. "Had one of the Republican challengers to Trump in the nomination delivered it, I think it would have had tremendous effect," he said. "The problem is — and I think she ticked off the major issues with Trump on foreign policy, namely a lack of knowledge and preparation, lack of policy and strategy and, in the end, temperament and his sort of strange admiration for strongmen like [Russia's Vladimir] Putin and the Chinese leadership — the problem is, she delivers it. You look at her and you think, this is the worst person the Democrats could have chosen to deliver the message, because you look at her and you think Benghazi, Russian reset, the disastrous withdrawal from Iraq," and other aspects of Obama's foreign policy that conservatives loathe.
When Baier turned to Hayes, he said that national security is a vulnerability for Clinton, but that "Donald Trump making this case is problematic, given the catalog of issues and statements she listed in her speech. I think, substantively, that part of her speech — the first third of her speech — could have been pulled from a Charles Krauthammer column or from the editorial pages of the National Review or The Weekly Standard. So on substance, that was the right critique to make, and I expect we'll hear a lot more of it. But I agree with Charles, also, that she's a very unlikely person to make that case." Watch below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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