Hillary Clinton to blame as ‘world spins apart’, declare Donald Trump and running mate Mike Pence

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Donald Trump has laid into Hillary Clinton, as well as Barack Obama, saying they carry direct responsibility for chaos and tragedy in the world, including the massacre in Nice and the attempted military overthrow in Turkey, because of timid and misbegotten foreign policies.

At a sometimes awkward and disjointed roll-out of his running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, in New York today, Mr Trump said together they would deliver a new “law and order” era for voters in November both at home and internationally.

Dismissing Ms Clinton as a “weak person”, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told an audience of carefully picked guests and reporters in a Midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom that, “we are the law and order candidates and with the law and order party we are going to change things around, there is going to be respect again for law and order”.

Taking the stage on his own for 40 minutes before eventually inviting Mr Pence to come out (and then vanishing himself), he lamented: “We have witnessed horror beyond belief. No matter where you look, and now it’s happening more and more, it’s never going to stop. We need new leadership, we need new thinking, we need strength, we need in our country law and order”.

He laid out the case that events such as the attempted coup in Turkey are a direct consequence of the leadership of Ms Clinton when she served President Obama as Secretary of State. “Now we are seeing unrest in Turkey, a further demonstration of the failure of Obama-Clinton. Every single thing they touched has turned to horrible, horrible death-defying problems,” he offered.

“The Middle East is more unstable than ever before, it’s never been like this, out of control,” he went on, while also mocking the Clinton campaign for querying his foreign policy qualifications in TV commercials. He countered that while it is true he is first a “really successful businessman”, he had seen the vote in Britain to leave the European Union coming before anyone else.

“I saw that was going to happen. I was the one that predicted it, everyone said I was wrong,” he said, arguing that Mr Obama going to London and saying that the UK would be at the “back of the line” in trade negotiations with the US if it chose Brexit, had backfired.

“They don't want to be told by you what to do and they don't what to be told that when people pour into their county they have to take them,” Mr Trump asserted. “I said that they are going to break away and everybody laughed at me and the odds were 20 per cent.”

Once at the microphone finally, Mr Pence, who has carved out a career championing extreme socially conservative positions on issues such as immigration, gay rights and abortion, similarly took up the populist theme of voters angered by politicians telling them what to do and think.

“We are tired of being told that a little intellectual elite in a distant capital can plan our lives better for us than we can plan it ourselves,” he said. “Donald Trump gets it and he understands the American people.”

For many Americans, it was their first introduction to Mr Pence, who was later joined again on the stage by his wife and three children and also the full Trump clan including the billionaire himself. While Mr Trump speaks raggedly and directly, this time without a teleprompter, Mr Pence has the smoothness of a practised politician and the cadences of a preacher.

“I accept your invitation to run and serve as vice-president of the United States of America,” Mr Pence, who is 57 with a lawn of white hair, said. “I come at this moment humbled, with a grateful heart and grateful to God for his amazing grace…and I am grateful to this builder, this fighter…who has set aside a legendary career in business to build a stronger America, Donald J Trump.”

Mr Pence, who gave up a chance to run for a second term as Governor of Indiana, similarly latched onto recent acts of terror and geopolitical instability as an indictment of recent American leadership in the world, never mind that his foreign policy experience is as scant as Mr Trump’s. Events in Nice and in Turkey were evidence the world is "spinning apart," he averred.

“History teaches us that weakness arouses evil,” he declared. “Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s foreign policy of leading from behind, moving red lines, feigning resets with a resurgent Russia, and the rise of Isis is all a testament to this truth in history and we must bring change.”

Mr Pence, who beat rivals Governor Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, to take the number slot on the ticket, got a standing ovation from the Trump campaign guests when he said he had accepted the offer in part “because Hillary Clinton must never become the president of the United States of America”.