I will be Democratic presidential nominee: Clinton

Hillary Clinton has asserted she will emerge as the US presidential nominee from the Democratic camp as she hit out at her Republican rival Donald Trump for his “dangerous” rhetoric including a ban on Muslims, saying the billionaire is unfit to lead the country.

“I will be the nominee for my party. That is already done in effect. There is no way that I won’t be,” Clinton told CNN.

The 68-year-old former secretary of state is yet to reach the magic number of 2,383 delegates but with 2,293 delegates already in her kitty, she has a lead comfortable enough that she could lose all the states left to vote by a landslide and still emerge as the Democratic nominee to face Trump.

This is so long as all her supporters among the party insiders known as super delegates continue to back her.

“I am confident. Well, in part from my own experience, you know?” she said when asked where from she was getting the confidence.

“I went all the way to the end against then Senator (Barack) Obama. I won nine out of the last 12 contests. Back in 2008 I won Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, so I know the intense feelings that arise, particularly among your supporters as you go toward the end. But, we both were following the same rules, just as both Senator Sanders and I are following the same rules,” she said about the contest with her sole primary rival Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

When asked if she thinks Trump is qualified to be the US president, Clinton said: “No, I do not.”

“I think in this past week, whether it’s attacking Great Britain, praising the leader of North Korea - a despotic dictator who has nuclear weapons, whether it is saying pull out of NATO, let other countries have nuclear weapons, the kinds of positions he is stating, and the consequences of those positions, and even the consequences of his statements are not just offensive to people, they are potentially dangerous,” Clinton said in the interview yesterday.

She said Trump says a lot of things that are provocative that actually make the important task of bringing everybody to the table and defeating terrorism more difficult.

“For example, when he says bar all Muslims from coming to the United States that sends a signal to majority Muslim nations, many of whom we have to work with in order to defeat terrorism, some of whom are already among our strongest allies in this fight - it sends a message of disrespect, and it sends a message that makes a situation inside those countries more difficult for them to call all-in the way we need them to go all-in,” said Clinton.

Trump, she pointed out, has said all Muslims should be barred from coming into the US. “All Muslims. Nobel Prize winners, entertainers, sports stars, you name it. The new mayor from London, all Muslims should be barred.

“Now, when confronted with the new mayor from London who, as you know, is the first Muslim elected to be mayor of London by the people of London, he says, well I’ll make an exception for him. I mean, the whole approach is just incredibly provocative and wrongheaded,” she added.