Clinton targets Trump on foreign policy

Hillary Clinton used a Monday speech to veterans to frame Donald Trump as lacking the serious temperament required to serve as commander in chief.

{mosads}”One thing you will never hear from me is praise for dictators and strongmen who have no love for America,” Clinton said during a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Charlotte, N.C.

While she didn’t mention Trump by name, the target of her barbs was clear.

“I have confidence; I have optimism. I don’t understand people who trash talk about America, who talk about us as being in decline, who act as though we are not yet the greatest country that has ever been created,” Clinton said.

“If you want somebody who will scapegoat other people, peddle fear and smear, I am not your candidate,” she added. “I am interested in bringing everybody together.”

Clinton’s comments are the latest in her strategy to frame Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, as unfit to lead the country. She’s previously targeted his potential handling of the economy and has recently shifted toward an indictment of his ability to run the military as Americans’ concerns about terrorism continue to grow.

She chided Trump for saying he’d order U.S. soldiers to kill the families of terrorists, arguing that the troops “deserve a commander in chief who will never order them to commit war crimes.” And she said that she would listen to experienced generals, instead of going it alone.

Clinton countered Trump’s trepidation on alliances like NATO by lauding her own vice presidential pick, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

“His son is actually deploying today to help defend our NATO allies in Europe,” she said.

“That’s how committed he is, and many others are, to our alliances. And we should be, too. America’s word has to mean something.”

She also swatted aside Trump’s calls for increased isolationism and his plan to build a border wall.

“If we retreat on either security or the economy behind some imaginary wall, we will have lost our leadership, our purpose, our chance to prevail in the 21st century,” she said.

The comments come hours before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention, which has been roiled by the leak of internal Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails showing an effort to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) challenge to Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in the primaries.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday announced her decision to step down from her role at the end of the event.