Speaking in San Diego on Thursday ahead of California's Democratic primary, where she's facing growing pressure from fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, Clinton warned that Donald Trump is unfit to lead the free world, and that electing him would be "a historic mistake," Time Magazine reported.
"Moscow and Beijing are deeply envious of our alliances around the world, because they have nothing to match them, Clinton said. "They'd love for us to elect a president who would jeopardize that source of strength," she added.
"Countries like Russia and China often work against us," Clinton added, emphasizing that she has had experience going "toe-to-toe with Russia and China, and many other different leaders around the world."
Trump, meanwhile, according to Clinton, "praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope. He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia."
Commenting on the speech, Buchanan suggested that the logic behind Clinton's strategy of painting Trump as unfit to lead is pretty obvious. "As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as 'temperamentally unfit' to be commander in chief."
"In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump," the commentator added.
However, "if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid," Buchanan emphasized. "For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures."
"That invasion was the worst blunder in US history and a contributing factor to the deepening disaster of the Middle East, from which, it appears, we will not soon be able to extricate ourselves."
Moreover, Buchanan noted, it was during her tenure as secretary of state that "Clinton supported the unprovoked US-NATO attack on Libya, and joked of the lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, 'We came. We saw. He died.'"
That attack was a venture which President Barack Obama has repeatedly said was the worst mistake of his presidency, the commentator noted.
"Is Clinton's role in pushing for two wars, both of which resulted in disasters for her country and the entire Middle East, something to commend her for the presidency of the United States? Is the slogan to be, 'Let Hillary clean up the mess she helped to make?'," Buchanan mockingly asked.
Buchanan suggested that ultimately, Donald Trump, if he stays true to his message, "can win the foreign policy debate, and the election, because what he is arguing for is what Americans want."
"They do not want any more Middle East wars. They do not want to fight the Russians in the Baltic or Ukraine, or the Chinese over some rocks in the South China Sea."
"They understand that, as Truman had to deal with Stalin, and Ike with Khrushchev, and Nixon with Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev, a US president should sit down with a Vladimir Putin to avoid a clash neither country wants, and from which neither country would benefit," the commentator added.
"The coming Clinton-neocon nuptials have long been predicted," Buchanan suggested. "They have so much in common. They belong with each other. But [the United States] will not survive as the last superpower if we do not shed this self-anointed role as the 'indispensable nation' that makes and enforces the rules for the 'rules-based world order,' and that acts as first responder in every major firefight on earth."
"What Trump has hit upon, what the country wants, is a foreign policy designed to protect the vital interests of the United States, and a president who will – ever and always – put America first," the analyst concluded.
A veteran political commentator, columnist and writer, Pat Buchanan is also a former White House Communications Director for the Reagan Administration, and a former Republican and Reform Party presidential candidate.
