Hillary Clinton warns Trump's budget would be a "grave mistake" for the U.S.
Hillary Clinton warned Friday that President Trump’s proposed government spending cuts would be detrimental to women and suggested that they would hurt U.S. national security.
“We are seeing signals of a shift that should alarm us all. This administration’s proposed cuts to international health, development and diplomacy would be a blow to women and children and a grave mistake for our country,” the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said at an event in Washington, D.C. hosted by Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security.
Clinton cited a letter signed by more than 120 retired generals and admirals that urged Congress and the Trump administration to not retreat from certain programs. She said they recognize that “turning our back on diplomacy won’t make our country safer. It will undermine our security and our standing in the world.”
The president unveiled his 2018 budget blueprint earlier this month that proposed dramatically slashing funding to the State Department with a 28 percent cut.
During the event, she presented the Hillary Rodham Clinton award to four Colombian women whose efforts helped secure a peace agreement in their country. Their work illustrated a point Clinton stressed -- that women are critical to peace negotiations.
And that provided a segue into a few veiled shots at the president. Clinton began to allude to certain studies about women and she said, “Here I go again, talking about research, evidence and facts,” which drew loud applause and cheers from the audience.
“When women are included in peace negotiations, agreements are less likely to fail and more likely to last,” she said.
She also said, “Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I will clearly state that women are not inherently more peaceful than men. That’s a stereotype that belongs in the alternative reality.”
Clinton appeared to be referring to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s comment from January that the White House “alternative facts” on the crowd size at the inauguration when officials gave the impression there were more attendees than there were in reality.
