Hillary Clinton admonished Donald Trump on Thursday for claiming she and President Barack Obama were the founders of the Islamic State group, as the White House rivals also clashed on plans to improve the USA economy. But given the opportunity Thursday morning to walk his statement back, Trump did the opposite.
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Since July’s Republican convention, Clinton has taken a firm lead in the polls as Trump has struggled from controversy to controversy, pursuing a feud with the Muslim family of a dead USA army captain and suggesting Russian Federation publish any of Clinton’s missing emails it has hacked, before this week’s inflammatory remarks. And from the white house, a one-word response.
Trump supporters told WESH 2 News they like what they heard inside Silver Spurs Arena.
In a radio interview later Thursday morning on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Trump would not back away from his “founder” line of attack against Obama even when offered an out by the host, who suggested to the Manhattan billionaire that “I know what you meant”.
“It’s either going to work or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice long vacation”.
Recent opinion polls have shown Trump losing ground to Clinton, a former USA senator and first lady, in the race for the November 8 election.
But in a tweet Friday criticizing CNN’s coverage, he said the network reported his claim “so seriously”.
“All I have to do is stop funding the Republican Party”, he said.
Clinton spokesman Jesse Lehrich, in response to Trump’s comments, pointed to United States advances against the militant group in Libya this week.
Perhaps Trump was alluding to how, under Obama’s foreign policy, ISIS grew, seizing more territory than it previously had in Iraq and Syria, particularly in the summer of 2014. Shiftingt he blame to Obama on Wednesday, he said “crooked Hillary Clinton” was actually the group’s co-founder. “He has got to learn to use language that has been thought through and that is clear to everybody, and to stick to that language”.
“It was a style that none of his Republican opponents could cope with”, Gingrich said.
“If they want to do that they can save me a lot of time and a lot of energy”, he told Fox News. Last night, you said the President was the founder of ISIS. You meant that he created the vacuum. “I don’t think I’ve made too many errors”, he told CNBC. “I gave him the most valuable player award”.
Trump then went on to explain the difference between calling the terrorist organization ISIS and ISIL, attacked Clinton over her 33,000 missing emails, her policies in Libya, saying that if Obama “had to do it again, he would never have chosen Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state”. “I call them co-founders”, Trump said and insisted that there is nothing wrong in saying that. “He hates them. He’s trying to kill them”, Hewitt said, according to a transcript of the show.
Trump stood firm when asked by CNBC whether it was appropriate to say a sitting USA president founded a jihadist group determined to kill Americans. “He was the founder”.
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Trump has blamed Obama’s decision to pull US forces from Iraq in 2011 for destabilizing the Middle East and creating a situation in which Islamic State militants could thrive.
