Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will be pressed on national security issues during the first presidential debate next week, according to an announcement Monday.
NBC’s Lester Holt, who will moderate the Sept. 26 debate at New York’s Hofstra University, has chosen “securing America” as one of three major topics for the debate, the Commission on Presidential Debates said.
{mosads}The other two topics include “America’s direction” and “achieving prosperity,” the Commission on Presidential Debates said in its release, noting that the topics were subject to change based on news developments.
The debate in New York will come a week after authorities took custody of a man believed to be behind explosions in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, raising the issue of terrorism in the presidential race as the White House contenders exchange jabs over national security.
Trump’s campaign on Monday argued “the only thing we can expect from a Hillary Clinton presidency is more attacks on our homeland and more innocent Americans being hurt and killed.”
A campaign aide argued the decision to remove U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 “created the vacuum that led to the founding of ISIS.”
The retort came after Clinton argued that terrorists had invoked Trump’s rhetoric in an attempt to turn the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) into a religious war.
“We know that a lot of rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS, because they’re looking to make this into a war against Islam rather than a war against jihadists,” Clinton said.
“Violent terrorists, people whose number in the tens of thousands, not tens of millions, they want to use that to recruit more fighters to turn this into a religious conflict,” she added.
The 90-minute debate next Monday will have six 15-minute segments, with two segments focusing on each topic, providing Trump and Clinton at least 30 minutes of debate time focused on national security.
It’s the first of three scheduled debates between Trump and Clinton.