After days of alleging repeatedly that President Barack Obama literally founded the Islamic State group, Donald Trump abruptly shifted tone on Friday and insisted his widely debunked claim had been sarcastic.
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Trump’s VP pick Mike Pence, for instance, carefully refrained from using the words “founder of ISIS” for Obama, but said the president was responsible for creating “the vacuum in the wider Middle East in which ISIS was able to spawn and grow”.
“Anyone willing to sink so low, so often should never be allowed to serve as our commander-in-chief”, she wrote.
“I do”, Trump said, using one acronym for the group.
And the Democratic National Committee on called on the real estate mogul to “apologize for his outrageous, unhinged and patently false suggestions”.
The Republican presidential candidate was given an opportunity to re-phrase his remarks during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. “I do. He was the most valuable player”.
Trump first made the assertion in a speech on Wednesday night in Florida, saying, “I call them co-founders” of Islamic State.
“This is another example of Donald Trump trash-talking the United States”, senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Trump has refused to make his filings public, saying they’re under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and he’ll release them only once that review is complete.
Trump’s campaign has placed strong emphasis on winning Pennsylvania, which last went for a Republican candidate in 1988. He eyed a reset Monday by rolling out his economic policies.
“In fact, in many respects, they honor President Obama”.
According to the GOP presidential nominee, Obama’s decision to pull US forces from Iraq in 2011 destabilized the Middle East and created a situation in which Islamic State militants could thrive. However, the jihadi organization was officially founded in 2013, months after Clinton had left the State Department. American soldiers had been in Iraq for more than eight years following the US-led invasion of the country in 2003 under Republican President George W. Bush. It was Bush’s administration, not Obama’s, that negotiated the 2009 agreement that called for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by December 31, 2011. He’d said similar things in the past about how Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had helped create the terror group, but the fervor with which he made the stronger claim stuck out. His running mate, Mike Pence, said the media was being distracted by semantics and that Mr Trump was making a broader point. “Is there something wrong with saying that? Why?”
“When you instead compress them into ‘Obama created ISIS, ‘ I know what Trump has in his mind, but that’s not what people hear”, Gingrich said.
“Look, all I do is tell the truth”.
Trump then mocked the “poor, pathetic” media in a subsequent tweet this morning for being unable to tell when he is being sarcastic. Relatives of Republican president Ronald Reagan, who was shot and wounded in 1981, and slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr also condemned Trump for his gun remarks. In the past, Trump has also falsely suggested Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya, where Obama’s father was from.
“Don’t believe it”, she said.
Minutes after releasing her returns, Clinton tweeted that it’s possible Trump paid no tax at all.
Clinton is trying to undercut the trustworthiness of rival Donald Trump.
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Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist who advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, said there’s a common-sense playbook for dealing with political slip-ups: “Stop the bleeding and put it behind you by apologizing”. His campaign also predicted Clinton, who supported TPP during the negotiation process, would ultimately approve the pact.
