Hillary Clinton changes course to expose Donald Trump's foreign policy foibles

At New Jersey rally Clinton says Trump will scam America like he scammed students at his university

Hillary Clinton with Jon Bon Jovi (AP)

Hillary Clinton is asking voters to contrast her record as America’s top diplomat with what they have seen from Donald Trump on foreign policy, saying he has already given succour to terrorists.

Speaking at a rally New Jersey, six days before the state holds primary elections, Mrs Clinton gave her clearest signal yet that she means to press the issue of competence on the world stage and national security as potentially her most potent weapon to strike at Mr Trump and diminish him.

“You are voting not just for the person who should be president,” she told a few hundred supporters inside an ageing Rutgers University geodesic-domed basketball arena in downtown Newark, “but you are voting of the person you think should be commander-in-chief.”

“He has insulted our closest allies,” an energised Ms Clinton went on. “He has praised the dictator of North Korea, he has advocated more countries getting nuclear weapons… he has advocated a return to torture and he has said he wants to ban all Muslims from coming into the United States.”

“This is dangerous, it is dangerous, it will make us more vulnerable,” she went on. “It will make the job of being president much harder. What he has already said has given aid and comfort to terrorists. They are using his words to recruit and radicalise,” young people overseas.

Mrs Clinton is set to deliver a major foreign policy address in San Diego on Thursday that her campaign said in an emailed statement to the media would, “make clear the threat that Donald Trump would pose to our national security and to put forth her own vision for keeping America safe at home and leading in the world".

After introductions by Jon Bon Jovi - the other New Jersey rock legend (after Bruce Springsteen) - and Senator Corey Booker, formerly the Mayor of Newark, Mrs Clinton also revelled in media reports of court documents released by a San Diego judge presiding over the civil fraud case against Mr Trump’s so-called - and now defunct -Trump University.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” she told the crowd, eliciting waves of mocking laughter, before relating testimony from Trump University employees describing how students were pressed to part with their money to take courses that promised to turn them into giant-slaying estate agents and developers. Mr Trump has agreed to testify himself in the case after the election in November.

“Trump U was a fraudulent scheme where Donald Trump enriched himself at the expense of hard-working people,” Mrs Clinton said, and where his employees were expected to “take advantage of vulnerable Americans by encouraging them to max out their credits cards and empty out their savings” to join it.

“This is just more evidence that Donald Trump is a fraud…he is trying to scam America, the way he scammed all those people at Trump U,” Mrs Clinton declared, to loud applause.

The Newark rally was Mrs Clinton’s last event in New Jersey before she heads to California, where she faces a potentially more dangerous challenge from her trailing but still stubborn rival for the Democratic nod, Senator Bernie Sanders. Both states have their primaries next Tuesday.

However, it is possible that if, as polls suggests, she defeats Mr Sanders in this state on the East Coast, that she will pass the 2,383-delegate mark to ensure she is crowned the party’s nominee at its convention in Philadelphia in July even before California has finished voting.

It is a possibility that alarms the Sanders camp, which is hoping that a win for them in California might yet change the dynamics of the nomination battle even in its twilight. A new Wall Sreet Journal/NBC poll published on Wednesday evening put Mrs Clinton only two points ahead of Mr Sanders in California, suggesting that he may indeed be on course to win there from behind.

Mrs Clinton clearly is anxious to win as decisively as she can in New Jersey thus finally wrapping up the contest even before the California results are in and dispatching Mr Sanders. “New Jersey, you have the opportunity to decide the nominee of the Democratic party next Tuesday,” she cried.

Mr Bon Jovi noted he had known the former first lady for years, and was embarrassed when he forgets what title she has at any one time, saying, “I just call her Mrs C.” It is her tenure as Secretary of State that Mrs Clinton is expected to emphasise now as she starts to turn all her attention on Mr Trump.

At this rally, she pointed in particular to her participation in the decision to send in special forces to capture Osama bin Laden in May 2011. But she also emphasised that the final decision was always going to be left to President Obama, thus suggesting that Mr Trump was not someone with the cool and the willingness to heed the advice of others to act in the same way when national security is at stake.

“You have got to be able to listen if you are president,” she said. On that particular day, “the president went off and considered everything and made the decision for us to go. It was the right decision. We did bring bin Laden to justice.”