UPDATED August 12, 10:20 a.m. ET: Donald Trump has responded to the media outrage following his claim that President Barack Obama founded ISIS, saying he was just joking. He accused CNN of whipping up the frenzy over his comments because they needed better viewership and added that "ISIS gained tremendous strength during Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State."
"When will the dishonest media report the facts!" he tweeted.
Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?
See original story published on 8/11/16 below.
At a rally for his presidential campaign on Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed President Barack Obama founded the terrorist group ISIS. On Thursday, Trump was given the chance in an interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt to dial back his remarks, but in true Trump style, the billionaire doubled down.
"ISIS is honoring president Obama," Trump told a crowd of supporters in Florida on Wednesday. "He is the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder. He founded ISIS." Trump added that he would consider Democratic nominee for president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the co-founder, effectively accusing both of them of treason.
During his interview with Trump on Thursday, Hewitt said, "Last night, you said the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace." To which Trump responded, "No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton."
Conservative though he is, Hewitt attempted once again to give Trump a chance to acknowledge the absurdity of his baseless claim, adding additional clarifying information: "But he’s not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He’s trying to kill them." Unwilling to see reason (at all), Trump replied, "I don’t care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?"
Okay, Donald.
Trump almost made it around to a lesser claim that the president's policies fostered the creation of ISIS but still came back to claiming flatly that Obama literally founded the Islamic State, saying, "If he [the president] would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS... Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS."
Tweets from Hillary Clinton's Twitter account on Thursday afternoon asserted that no, the president did not in fact found ISIS and stated that for remarks like these, Trump should never be allowed to serve in office.
