TRUMP WILL ‘LOOK INTO’ CRIMEA.
• U.S. President Barack Obama offered a forceful endorsement of Hillary Clinton Wednesday, painting her as a successor uniquely qualified to carry on his legacy at home and abroad.
“There has never been a man or a woman, not me, not Bill (Clinton), more qualified than Hillary to serve as president of the United States,” Obama said in a speech at the Democratic National Convention that alternated warnings and joy.
“She never ever quits,” he said. “That is the Hillary I know.”
Obama also took aim at Republican nominee Donald Trump. He called the election in November a “fundamental choice” that would determine whether the country stays true to the “great experiment” of self government.
But in a night full of dark warnings, Obama also struck an optimistic tone. He proclaimed that “America is already great. America is already strong.”
“We don’t look to be ruled,” he said.
In a surprise appearance at the conclusion of Obama’s 45-minute speech, Clinton strode out on to the stage to embrace the president, to thunderous applause.
Earlier in the evening, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden painted Trump as a danger to America and the world in a rousing attack on the Republican nominee. “He has no clue about what makes America great,” Biden said. “Actually, he has no clue, period.”
Biden, speaking on the third night of a convention dominated by battles between Bernie Sanders loyalists and the party’s mainstream, called Trump the least qualified major party nominee in American history. His embrace of torture “betrays our values,” Biden said. “We simply cannot let that happen as Americans.”
Biden’s speech denounced Trump’s foreign policy experience and plans. It came on a day when Trump seemed to invite Russian hackers to infiltrate Clinton’s emails and interfere in the American election process.
A host of speakers used that moment to skewer Trump with hastily written lines, portraying the New York businessman as erratic and near traitorous. “This morning, he personally invited Russia to hack us,” said ret. Rear Admiral John Hutson. “That’s not law and order. That’s criminal intent.”
Former CIA director Leon Panetta told a sometimes hostile crowd that the United States could not afford a president “who believes America should withdraw from the world, threatens our international treaties, and violates our moral principles.
“We cannot afford an erratic finger on our nuclear weapons,” he said.
“The America we love does not engage in torture,” said former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley in his speech. It does not build walls or private prisons, he continued. “I say to hell with Trump’s American nightmare. We believe in the American dream!”
Hutson, a poor speaker, still delivered the most pointed line of the night. Channelling the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, he told Trump, who once belittled John McCain for getting captured in Vietnam, that he “wasn’t fit to polish John McCain’s boots.”
O’Malley, though, came the closest to attacking Trump on his own terms. He called the Republican nominee an “immigrant-bashing carnival barker” and a “bully racist.”
“Hillary Clinton actually knows the enduring symbol of America is not a barbed wire fence,” he said. “It is the Statue of Liberty.”
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent once elected as a Republican, called Trump a “dangerous demagogue” and urged the crowd to vote for Clinton. The billionaire media entrepreneur also ridiculed Trump’s business record. “I’m a New Yorker and I know a con when I see one,” he said.
The focus on foreign affairs and terrorism came after an evening heavy on liberal policy. Five years after she was nearly murdered in a mass shooting in Arizona, former Rep. Gabby Giffords appeared on stage to make an emotional plea for gun control.
She emerged to enormous applause, her body still bearing the signs of that 2011 attack. “Speaking is difficult for me,” she said. “But come January, I want to say these two words: Madame President.”
Giffords said Clinton “would stand up to the gun lobby,” echoing a parade of earlier speakers who had lost relatives to mass shootings in Orlando, Sandy Hook and elsewhere.
The party also played a short film about climate change directed by James Cameron, the creator of Avatar. Afterward, California Gov. Jerry Brown attacked Trump for denying the science behind global warming.
“Trump says global warming is a hoax. I say Donald Trump is a fraud,” he said. “Trump says there is not drought in California. I say Trump lies.”
The sustained attacks on the Republican nominee came as the party continued to suffer minor mutinies and discord in Philadelphia. Delegates loyal to Bernie Sanders once again occupied a media tent at the Wells Fargo arena Wednesday night, to protest what they see as a tainted nomination process.