Trump pledges to work with Egypt's strongman Abdel-Fattah Sisi

Donald Trump has pledged to cooperate with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah to combat terrorism in his first foreign policy speech as the Republican nominee.

Trump, who is tanking in the polls following weeks of disastrous gaffes, made his pitch to be a security strongman on Monday as he laid out a US blueprint for defeating global terrorism.

"We will partner with King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Sisi of Egypt, and all others who recognise this ideology of death that must be extinguished," he said in Ohio, a battleground state considered essential to winning the US presidential election.

"We will work side-by-side with our friends in the Middle East, including our greatest ally, Israel."

The Republican nominee vowed to defeat "Islamic terrorism" and criticised the Obama administration for supporting the 2011 uprising in Egypt the ousted long-time Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

"[Clinton] helped force out a friendly regime in Egypt and replace it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has retaken control, but Clinton has opened the Pandora's box of radical Islam."

	Sisi and Trump share common views on the Muslim Brotherhood [Getty]

His address marked the latest attempt by the Trump campaign to get their maverick candidate back on message as Clinton surges ahead in the polls.

Trump said he believed the US could find "common ground with Russia" in the fight against IS - a claim bound to do little to silence critics who accuse him of being soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He said his administration would "aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy [IS]," and be a "friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East."

At home he demanded new immigration screening, saying that the perpetrators of a series of attacks in the United States - including the September 11, 2001, hijackings, the 2013 Boston bombings and the recent mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub - involved "immigrants or the children of immigrants."

"We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people," he ventured, promising to temporarily suspend immigration from "the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world" that export terrorism.

On the home front, he also proposed setting up a "commission on radical Islam" which would include "reformist voices in the Muslim community" to root out jihadist networks and stop the radicalisation of young Americans.

The Clinton campaign responded by stating that any policy submitting immigrants to ideological tests was a "ploy."

"This so-called 'policy' cannot be taken seriously." Clinton senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement.