Hillary Clinton Just Showed How She Can Dominate Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton’s speech on foreign policy Thursday accomplished everything she needed it to. By starting with foreign policy, she contrasted her strongest asset against Donald Trump's weakest. She made fun of Trump’s thin skin and overconfidence in his own “very good brain,” but she also noted how serious it is for a president -- with control over nuclear weapons and the power to send America’s children into war -- to have these traits.

"Now imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life or death decisions on behalf of the United States," she said to laughter and boos. "Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he's angry but America's entire arsenal. Do we want him making those calls -- someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism. Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?"

Perhaps just as importantly, she matched Trump on belittling insults, just to let him know she can.

Who knows if she can ride this wave till November, but for now it felt like a turning point in the campaign, and an assertion of her dominance over a man who has spent the last 10 months dominating every opponent who tried to take him on.

She set a trap, which he immediately walked into. “We all know the tools Donald Trump brings to the table: bragging, mocking, composing nasty tweets,” she said. “I’m willing to bet he’s writing a few right now.”

She reviewed her resume – briefly. This part was easy enough. “Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft,” she said. “I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities, and LGBT people around the world.” Oh, and she couldn’t help mentioning that she went to 112 countries as secretary of state.

She highlighted some of Trump’s scarier positions. She called him out for insulting Mexicans as “rapists” and “killers” and threatening to build a “beautiful wall” at Mexico’s expense. “We’re lucky to have two friendly neighbors on our land borders,” she said. “Why would he want to make one of them an enemy?” She worried that Trump has shown a penchant for destabilizing existing alliances, talking about pulling the U.S. out of NATO and openly encouraging a war between Japan and North Korea.

She said he doesn’t really have positions. His foreign policy ideas are just a bunch of “rants, feuds and outright lies,” she said. He’s flip-flopped wildly on ISIS, one day saying “maybe Syria should be a free zone for ISIS” and the next saying he’d unleash nuclear weapons -- and tens of thousands of American ground troops -- against the terrorists. “He doesn’t have a clue,” she said.

Then she raised the specter of Trump having access to the nuclear codes. “It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a nuclear war just because someone got under his very thin skin,” she said.

She aligned him with foreign dictators and strongmen. He has defended Russian President Vladimir Putin. “If you don’t know who you’re dealing with, men like Putin will eat your lunch,” Clinton said. Trump got an endorsement from North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un recently after suggesting he would be open to sitting down to negotiate — which isn’t on its face a crazy thing. After all, the Obama administration did the same with Iran, another regime many people didn’t want to give the time of day. Perhaps less widely known and far more troubling, she said that Trump "praised" the Chinese government in 1990 for its massacre of students in Tiananmen Square. He said at the time, “That shows you the power of strength.”

She didn’t get tangled up defending her unpopular decisions. She talked a lot about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden but didn’t say a word about Benghazi or Honduras. Clinton has her weak points. Even after she withstood 11 hours of Republican interrogation over her handling of the embassy attack in Benghazi, her critics aren't done with that issue. And her support for a violent coup in Honduras has never received much scrutiny.

She insulted Trump's manhood. Not the way Marco Rubio did with that weird small-hands thing. She contrasted his plan to murder the families of suspected terrorists (which, by the way, would be a war crime) with Navy SEALs taking the time to protect the safety of women and children during the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. “Donald Trump may not get it,” she said, “but that’s what honor looks like."

She questioned his patriotism. One of Trump’s favorite lines is that the world is “laughing at” or “spitting on” the United States. “He bought full page ads in newspapers across America back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was president, saying that America lacked a backbone and the world was – you guessed it -- laughing at us,” she said. “You’ve got to wonder why somebody who has so little confidence in America -- and has felt that ways for at least 30 years -- wants to be our president.”

She questioned his sanity. She wondered aloud about his “bizarre fascination with dictators and strongmen who have no love for America” but said she’d “leave it to his psychiatrist to explain his affection for tyrants.”

She ridiculed his résumé. “There’s no risk of people losing their lives if you blow up a golf course deal,” she said. “Being interviewed on the same episode of 60 Minutes as Putin was is not the same thing as actually dealing with Putin.” There’s a difference, she said, between reality TV and reality. Repeatedly, she mentioned he had “no idea” or “no clue.”

She pivoted back to the economy. Just in case geopolitical intrigue isn’t your thing, Clinton led with some bread-and-butter issues. She said being strong in the world starts with being strong at home, and that starts with investments in infrastructure, innovation, and education to create jobs and strengthen the middle class.

Her performance sets up what will undoubtedly be an entertaining, if ugly, mano-a-mano in the general election — and might help her out in next week's surprisingly close primary fight against Bernie Sanders in California.

After a campaign — heck, a lifetime — full of criticisms that she’s not warm enough, that she’s too strident, that she’s not likable, Clinton made her pitch that Trump is a wildcard who shouldn't be responsible for the deadly power of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and military might.

She won’t convince Trump’s most ardent supporters, but that’s not who she’s going after. She’s going after the moderates and independents who aren’t wild about either candidate and are still deciding, or who might stay home. She made Trump out to be laughable and dangerous, in equal parts, while pointing to her vast experience.

Whether or not you like what she’s done with that experience — and whether or not you’d want to sit down for a beer with her — she made the case that she would at least know what to do with the powers of the presidency, while Trump would be a bull in a china shop, with more devastating consequences than just broken china.