AhlulBayt News Agency - Donald Trump accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of establishing the ISIS group that is wreaking havoc from the Middle East to European cities.
“In many respects, you know, they honour President Obama,” Trump said during a raucous campaign rally outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “He is the founder of (Daesh).”
He repeated the allegation three more times for emphasis.
The Republican presidential nominee in the past has accused his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, of founding the militant group. As he shifted the blame to Obama on Wednesday, he said that “crooked Hillary Clinton” was actually the group’s co-founder.
Trump has long blamed Obama and his former secretary of state — Clinton — for pursuing Mideast policies that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was exploited by Daesh. He’s sharply criticized Obama for announcing he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, a decision that many Obama critics say created the kind of instability in which extremist groups like Daesh thrive.
The White House declined to comment on Trump’s accusation.
The Daesh group began as Iraq’s local affiliate of Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the U.S. on 9-11. The group carried out massive attacks against Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority, fuelling tensions with Al Qaeda’s central leadership. The local group’s then-leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, was killed in 2006 in a U.S. airstrike but is still seen as the Daesh group’s founder.
In June, when a shooter who claimed allegiance to Daesh killed 49 people in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub, Trump seemed to suggest Obama was sympathetic to the group when he said Obama “doesn’t get it or, or he gets it better than anybody understands.”
Trump lobbed the allegation midway through his rally at a sports arena, where riled-up supporters shouted obscenities about Clinton and joined in unison to shout “lock her up.” He railed against the fact that the Orlando shooter’s father, Seddique Mateen, was spotted in the crowd behind Clinton during a Monday rally in Florida, adding, “Of course he likes Hillary Clinton.”
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