I call President Obama and Hillary Clinton the founders of ISIS. Clinton tweeted, “It can be hard to muster outrage as frequently as Donald Trump should cause it, but his smear campaign against President Obama requires it”.
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“He (Obama) was the founder of ISIS”. See, by saying “founder” three times and “founded” once, the tell-it-like-it-is, anti-establishment nominee with the discourse of a sixth grader was speaking artfully.
Quite literally, Trump is not only incorrect in his statement that Obama and Clinton “founded ISIS”, but his defiant attitude directly attacks the integrity of American leaders.
The Republican presidential nominee in the past has accused his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, of founding the militant group. “The chant jumps past all that and says ‘lock her up.’ And every once in a while, there’s someone at a Trump rally who says ‘kill her'”.
He is now behind Clinton in opinion polls, and many Republicans are alarmed that not only could the party lose the chance to win the White House but that Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives could be at stake. Even as he was given opportunities Thursday to clean up his quip about Obama from a day earlier, Trump instead took it further. Trump, 70, said. “Are people complaining that I said he was the founder of ISIS?”
“You know how they get out?” In fact, he gets in sports they have awards he gets the most valuable player award.
Trump has long blamed Obama and his former secretary of state – Clinton – for their Mideast policy. The U.S. has led a coalition of a dozen Western and Arab countries in a sustained airstrike campaign – backed by Iraqi ground forces – that have cut the group in half and cost it 45 percent of its territory.
Other sources such as RFE/RL explain that while the Iraq invasion certainly played a key role in pushing a top Jordanian militant to align his group with al Qaeda, the riff ISIS holds against the West dates back to the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.
The comments represent shift in tone from earlier this month, when Trump repeatedly warned supporters that the election could be stolen from them by a “rigged” vote.
The Islamic State group began as Iraq’s local affiliate of al-Qaida, the group that attacked the USA on September 11, 2001. The local group’s then-leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in 2006 in a US airstrike but is still seen as the Islamic State group’s founder.
Trump’s accusation – and his use of the president’s middle name, Hussein – echoed previous instances where he’s questioned Obama’s loyalties. “I say something about them, it’s awful”, he said. In the past, Trump has also falsely suggested Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya, where Obama’s father was from. But GOP strategist Mike DuHaime, who advised Trump ally Chris Christie’s presidential bid, said there could be benefits to Trump’s newfound self-awareness.
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Recent opinion polls have shown Trump losing ground to Clinton, a former U.S. senator and first lady, in the race for the November 8 election.
