By: Riley Head ~Copy Editor~

Recently, NBC hosted a Commander-in-Chief town hall forum between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during which host Matt Lauer, veterans and active duty military members asked the two candidates about their foreign policy plans.

The first question asked of Clinton was in regards to her infamous email server. Lauer spent more than 10 of Clinton’s 30 minutes on her emails before moving on to press her about her vote for the Iraq War and her participation in the Iran Nuclear Deal, with the only questions about future policy coming from members of the audience.

The first question Lauer asked Trump was “What have you experienced in your personal life or your professional life that you believe prepares you to make the decisions a Commander-in-Chief has to make?” Trump began with “Well, I’ve built a great company, I’ve been all over the world.” This continued for a while, until Lauer stopped him to re-ask the question. Trump still could not give an answer. His best justification was “I have great judgement.”

Nothing in Trump’s life has made him qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. In fact, nothing in Trump’s life has prepared him to be the President of the United States of America. Leading a successful business is quite different than leading men and women into life-or-death situations. Building a real estate empire varies from building cohesive policies that invoke bipartisanship and fix real issues.

Throughout the town hall forum, I could not find one example of when Trump actually answered a question. All of his answers were empty, unrelated facts or wild critiques of Clinton. I watched the forum, looking for any concrete answers, but there were none. It was all a smoke screen. He kept bragging about his foolproof way to defeat ISIS, but the only thing he is willing to share about this plan is that it involves asking other people what their plan is. He projects anger and a “commitment” to “change” as an appeal to people’s emotions – their fear, their anger.

So my question to the media, to the American people is why are we still taking Donald Trump seriously? Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate the U.S. has ever seen. She earned a Doctor of Law degree from Yale University. She was the first female partner at the third oldest law firm in the country. She served as First Lady of both Arkansas and the U.S. She was the first female senator from New York and was re-elected. She campaigned against President Obama and lost gracefully. She was Secretary of State – third in command of the nation – for four years. And now she is the best option to be the 45th President of the United States.

Clinton understands the issues. She has literally been studying them for at least 47 years. She has written and impacted policy, she has worked with both Republicans and Democrats to increase bipartisanship and she has changed real lives for the better. Yet her entire career of public service is hung up on an issue of electronic mail. While I agree that the correct handling of classified information is incredibly important, I also believe that her plan for America is exponentially more important and relevant to our future. People say they don’t know if they can trust her – I point to her lifelong dedication to the American public. She has quite literally never done anything else. To base your opinion on one act that we don’t fully understand the impact of is to miss the importance and expertise that will affect the issues we care about the most.

So yes, we should be skeptical. We should keep an eye on the FBI reports, and she should take responsibility. But we should not let it be a roadblock to talking about the actual issues. Her platforms are cohesive and planned out with years of experience. We should draw more attention to the fact that Trump uses loaded language instead of speaking on actual policy and is not a viable candidate to lead the United States of America.