CHUCK TODD (HOST): Trump’s address comes at a time when he has received poor marks from 64 percent of voters on the question of dealing with an international crisis. Even Republican voters have mixed views on Trump’s ability to deal with that kind of issue. Thirty-seven percent gave him poor marks, versus 42 percent of Republicans who give him positive marks on dealing with a crisis.
[…]
TODD: I'm joined by Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the foreign policy adviser to Marco Rubio, and says he'd prefer Hillary Clinton over Trump. Mr. Boot, after hearing -- welcome to the show. After hearing Donald Trump today, do you have any second thoughts about that proclamation that you would take Clinton over Trump on the world stage?
MAX BOOT: Not at all, Chuck. This was a standard Trump temper tantrum that had a teleprompter. That was really the only new element here. It was a typically contradictory, even bizarre performance by Donald Trump. When he was actually attacking President Obama for abandoning our allies, and in the next breath, he’s saying he's going to abandon our allies, NATO, and Japan, and South Korea. He's suggesting that President Obama is not engendering confidence on the world stage, at the same time that he's saying he's going to be unpredictable and have this secret plan to deal with ISIS that nobody knows about. He's saying that he’s going to work closely with the Muslim world at the same time he's going to bar Muslims from coming to the United States. I mean, he was introduced by Zal Khalilzad, an eminent American diplomat who happens to be a Muslim, who would never have been allowed to come to this country if Trump were president. This is not a man who engenders any degree of confidence as a potential commander in chief. This is not somebody who should be handed the nuclear codes. And today's speech, I think, just reinforces how ill-prepared he is to deal with the responsibilities of the high office to which he now aspires.
