Trump now claims that he was opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning, despite evidence to the contrary.
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“ISIS is honoring President Obama”, Trump declared during a campaign rally in Sunrise, Florida. Trump had made clear that he wasn’t going to pivot in any serious way anytime soon.
On Thursday, Trump accused the Obama administration of not providing security to Americans from Daesh terrorists.
Trump had also been inching up to this specific outlandish ISIS claim for weeks.
“It’s not what I’m looking to do – I think we’re going to have a victory but we’ll see”, he said. “They are the lowest form of humanity”.
GOP concerns about Trump are compelling enough that dozens of anxious Republicans were gathering signatures for a letter urging the party’s chairman to stop helping Trump and focus on protecting vulnerable House and Senate candidates, according to a draft obtained by the Associated Press.
This new controversy comes after some 70 GOP current and former officeholders wrote a letter to the Republican National Committee urging that funding be diverted from Trump’s effort to congressional campaigns.
“Trump’s divisive and unsafe actions are not only a threat to our other candidates, but to our party and the nation”, the letter stated. Recent polls have shown that Clinton maintains a lead in the state, with a recent Public Policy Polling survey having her beating Trump by three percentage points.
The Islamic State group began as Iraq’s local affiliate of al-Qaida, the group that attacked the USA on September 11, 2001.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump breathed new life into the conspiracy theories about Mr Obama’s birthplace – and refused to challenge a rally attendee’s assertion that the President was a Muslim.
Clinton posted on social media website Twitter that Trump’s comments are disqualifying.
Trump claims the U.S. government “has unleashed ISIS”. Except that they had no problem with it when Hillary Clinton called Trump an ISIS recruiter. “I give [Obama] the most valuable player award”.
In an interview on Thursday morning, Trump defended the remarks.
“Is there something wrong with saying that? Why? So you could say Trump and his friend Putin are the founders of ISIS, which probably would be more accurate”, she said.
“All I do is tell the truth”.
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His conservative host Hugh Hewitt tried to reinterpret Trump’s comments on Wednesday in Florida, suggesting that Obama “created the vacuum” for ISIS, rather than actually founding ISIS.
