“No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do”.
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Only hours before, the billionaire businessman had restated the allegation with no mention of sarcasm, telling rally-goers in Kissimmee, Florida, that “I’ve been saying that Barack Obama is the founder”.
HUGH HEWITT: I’ve got two more questions.
As he often does, the Republican presidential nominee accused the news media of misconstruing something he said.
In Wilmington, N.C. on Tuesday, it what some took as provocation of violence, he malevolently speculated that the “Second Amendment” people could stop a putative President Hillary Clinton from appointing Supreme Court justices partial to gun-control.
He appeared to be mimicking the argument that the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq under Obama, with Clinton serving as secretary of state, created a vacuum that allowed the ISIS group to emerge and flourish in Iraq and Syria.
Trump raised eyebrows when he made that claim and gave many details of what he said he saw in the film. I give him the most valuable player award.
On Wednesday, Trump said Obama is the founder of Daesh. The Bush administration accused former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, of constructing weapons of mass with the intention of attacking the U.S. or its allies. “You can debate which of these constitutes ISIS’s “founding” in some metaphysical sense”.
Clinton, for instance, would reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement she backed while Secretary of State, which puts her theoretically onside with Trump, though the ideology guiding their respective positions could not be more different.
“With his bad policies, that’s why ISIS came about”, Trump continued.
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had its roots in the al Qaeda insurgency that arose after the United States led an invasion of Iraq in 2003. Him and Hillary. I mean, she gets it too. If he would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS. He is the founder of ISIS.
Other observers at the rally noted tension between a black couple and some white supporters with a Confederate flag with “Trump 2016” added around the stars and bars.
Undeterred, Trump stayed on-message, “I don’t care”.
For lots of conservatives, it’s a widely held notion that ISIS’s rise is the direct result of the “vacuum of power” created after Obama pulled troops out of Iraq. If his style costs him the election in 90 days, he goes back to a good life, he said.
At a rally in MS in January, he said: “They’ve created ISIS. And I would say the co-founder would be ‘Crooked Hillary Clinton'”. “She is responsible for ISIS”. A moment later, on another topic, he referred to the president by his full legal name: Barack Hussein Obama.
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At the Republican National Convention, Trump said, “Pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map”. Then Trump went even further.
