Fiorina: 'We'd Better Have a Nominee Not Afraid to Throw Punches All Night Long'

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina labeled Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “not trustworthy” and warned that the Republican nominee cannot be afraid to “throw punches” on the debate stage.

Fiorina said she has been asked on the campaign trial whether or not a woman’s hormones would prevent her from serving in the Oval Office.

“Hillary Clinton must not be president of these United States but not because she is a woman. Hillary Clinton must not be president of these United States because she is not trustworthy, because she lacks a track record of leadership and because her policies are bad for the people of this nation,” Fiorina said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority conference. “We had better have a nominee on that general election debate stage who will not be afraid to throw punches all night long.”

The former Hewlett Packard CEO criticized the federal government for ineptitude, naming the hacking of federal employees’ personal information and the Transportation Security Administration’s performance as examples.

“Every day we open the newspaper and see yet another story of government ineptitude – yes, it is a strong word, but honestly when the TSA fails 96 percent of the time, what else to call it? When the IRS in 2015 says, ‘so sorry, we can’t answer taxpayers’ questions because we need more money to man the phones,’ that is called ineptitude,” she said.

“I chaired the advisory board of the Central Intelligence Agency for several years, I’ve advised secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security and State, I can tell you we have known with certainly for at least for the last 12 years that the Chinese have been trying to hack into our federal government systems and databases. We can do this, we’re the most powerful nation in the world, but not with a government that has grown so bureaucratic that it is inept at its most basic functions,” she added.

Following her speech, PJ Media asked Fiorina how she would respond to the security hacks as president.

“What a great question, you know, as I mentioned, we have known for over a decade that the Chinese government has a very concerted strategy of hacking into our federal government systems and databases and obviously this was an example of government ineptitude. In fact, we also now know that there was an Inspector General report of several months ago which asked — recommended strongly to the Office of Personnel Management to take down two of their systems because they were so vulnerable to attack and that report was ignored inexplicably,” she said.

“What we need to do is have a concerted strategy to push back, that requires in my opinion a consolidated command in the federal government whose mission it is to push back on this. It will require, among other things, cooperation between the private sector and the public sector to detect attacks quickly and repel those attacks and, finally, it will require leadership.”

In the speech, Fiorina also said she has knows more world leaders than any other candidate except “maybe” Clinton. However, Fiorina said she did not do “photo-ops,” explaining that she had meetings with leaders such as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

She said her first phone call in the Oval Office would be to Netanyahu to inform him that the U.S. will stand with the state of Israel. The second would be to the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei.

“He may not take my phone call, but he would get the message and the message would be this – new deal, whatever the deal is, you’ve got a new deal and it is this — until and unless you open up every nuclear facility to full unfettered, anytime, anywhere inspections, until you open up every uranium enrichment facility to the same, we will make it as difficult as possible for you to move money around the global financial system. We can do that,” she said to a standing ovation.

“Once again, a phone call important in and of itself but a phone call that reaches every adversary in the world that says the United States of America will confront our adversaries.”