Hillary ClintonREUTERS/Rebecca Naden
- Hillary Clinton tells a London audience she’s worried that Donald Trump could in ‘a moment of pique’ launch a nuclear missile.
- The former Presidential Election candidate accused the US President of ‘picking fights’ with North Korea and Iran for the sake of ‘point scoring.’
- Clinton adds that Russia’s interference inthe 2016 election amounted to a ‘cyber 9/11.’
LONDON — Former US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she is genuinely worried that President Donald Trump will in a moment of rage launch a nuclear missile — and that there’d be no way to stop him.
Speaking at the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival on Sunday evening, Clinton, who ran against Trump in last year’s US Presidential Election for the Democrats, claimed Congress is currently “trying to figure out” how they can limit Trump’s power in order to prevent a nuclear war.
Trump earlier this year threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” after Pyongyang conducted a series of nuclear missile tests.
“A lot of people thought I was probably exaggerating it, but now we are worried and Congress is worried about whether they can take that power away from Trump so that in a moment of pique he doesn’t pick up that phone and call whoever is sitting in the control centre today,” Clinton told an audience of around 3,000 people, which included London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Labour Party Deputy Leader Tom Watson, and former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
“I tried to raise it before and I’m raising it again here. It’s why members of Congress on both sides are trying to work out how they can contain [Trump].
“There was a recent reporting which said that Tillerson [Secretary of State Rex Tillerson], McMaster [National Security Adviser HR McMaster, Kelly [White House Chief of Staff John Kelly] Mattis [Defence Secretary James Mattis]… they’re all trying to figure out how they prevent this.”
Asked whether she was concerned that Trump would launch a nuclear attack during his presidency, Clinton said: “I’m worried about that now. I had big differences with so many of the other people who have been President during my lifetime, but I never worried about that.
“Republicans and Democrats are scratching their heads trying to figure out how they interpose – maybe they’ll say [a nuclear attack] has to be jointly signed off by the secretary of defence and the secretary of state. Some are even saying there should have to be a declaration of war [by Congress].”
Clinton went on to accuse Trump of “picking fights” with world powers like North Korea and Iran for the sake of “scoring points” and appealing to his voter base. Trump last week imposed new sanctions on Iran and refused to support the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015, describing it as “one of the worst and most one-sided deals.”
Russian interference in US Election was “cyber 911”
Clinton, who is touring the UK to launch her book ‘What Happened’, said Russia’s interference on the last year’s Presidential Election amounted to a “cyber 9/11” and warned that Moscow is “not done” in tampering in western democracies.
“We had really well-respected security, intelligence veterans saying this was a ‘cyber 9/11’ in the sense it was a direct attack on our institutions,” she said.
“That may sound dramatic but we know that they probed and tried to intrude into election systems — not just the social media propaganda part of their campaign.”
Clinton claimed that “a lot more connections have yet to come to light” and said that she would have called for an independent commission “to get to the bottom of it” had she been elected.
“The Russians are not done; this is an ongoing threat,” she warned, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue to try and influence the outcome of elections in order to expand his power across the world.
She accused Putin of sharing Trump’s attitude towards women. “He doesn’t like women very much. His behaviour around women. I’ve seen it in rooms with him. Condescending, insulting comments. He has a record of it.”
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