Washington—Donald Trump delivered a call to arms for America’s conservative right Friday, urging them to vote en masse on Election Day to defeat White House rival Hillary Clinton, who urged more robust national security efforts.
Trump also took Clinton to task over her diplomatic record, blasting her for a second straight day as a “trigger-happy” secretary of state who emboldened North Korea into conducting yet another nuclear test and put Iran on the path to atomic weapons.
“Her tenure has brought us only war and destruction and death,” Trump said.
The Republican nominee was the star guest at a Washington gathering of grassroots activists, conservative stalwart lawmakers and leaders in the anti-abortion and religious freedom movements.
He sought to lock up commitment from the large and important evangelical and social conservative voting bloc, four years after millions among the religious right opted to stay home instead of support Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
“In a Trump administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like you’ve never seen before,” Trump said to a rousing ovation.
“You have to get out and vote on November 8. You didn’t vote four years ago,” he admonished the crowd. “You didn’t vote.”
Trump’s attendance at the Values Voter Summit highlights how conservatives are keen to press such issues on the political mainstream as the bitterly fought presidential campaign heads into its final two months.
Conservative activists have painted President Barack Obama’s administration as having rolled back the rights of Americans seeking to practice their religion free from government interference.
Billionaire Trump is under pressure to convince the far right of his conservative values, and while it was the perfect opportunity to reiterate a pro-life position, he largely steered clear of the sensitive issue Friday.
He is well aware of his need to court middle-of-the-road voters including independents, as he trails Clinton in most polls ahead of the November 8 election.
In that vein, his campaign has taken steps to distance the Republican nominee from his years-long propagation of the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States.
“He believes President Obama was born here… He was born in Hawaii,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN.
Her comments came a day after Trump surrogate and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani made similar statements.
Trump himself has so far refused to acknowledge Obama’s presidential legitimacy once and for all, and he made no mention of it Friday.
The real-estate magnate was the most prominent early proponent of a theory that Obama, the nation’s first black president, was not born in the United States and therefore, under the US Constitution, ineligible to be commander in chief.
Trump embraced the long-debunked “birther movement” in early 2011, eager to push the theory as a way to connect with white conservatives and catapult himself to prominence while he mulled his own run for the White House.
Clinton meanwhile convened a Friday working session addressing terrorism and national security in New York with a bipartisan group of experts including ousted former CIA director David Petraeus, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan John Allen and former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen.
“I asked them to join me for a candid conversation about some of the most challenging issues facing our country because I believe that America’s national security must be the top priority for our next president,” she said after the meeting.
“I support more special forces, enablers and trainers, as needed, intelligence gathering and reconnaissance” in the battle against jihadists, she said.
The national security gathering came two days before the country marks the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Clinton, a former US senator representing New York, will attend the ceremony Sunday at Ground Zero. She is going not in a campaign or political capacity but “to pay her respects,” a campaign aide said.
Trump savaged Clinton for saying during a Wednesday national security forum that she would never place more US troops on the ground in Iraq to tackle the Islamic State jihadist threat.
“They would dream of having her as president,” Trump said of IS fighters.
As for North Korea’s latest test of a nuclear weapon, one which both candidates strongly denounced, Trump noted that it was Pyongyang’s fourth since Clinton first headed the State Department in 2009.
“It’s just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state,” he said.