Trump repeats claim that Clinton co-founded ISIS
Republican nominee answers critics with inflammatory rhetoric
Facing one of the toughest stretches of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has taken to responding to Hillary Clinton’s increasingly pointed questions about his fitness to serve in the Oval Office with exaggerated or false claims about the threat she would pose as president.
Accused by Clinton and by prominent figures within his own party of posing a unique menace if he were elected, and impeded by distractions of his own making, Trump has slid in public opinion polls, not only nationally and in battleground states but on almost every important question, from temperament to foreign policy knowledge to experience.
His detractors have described a Trump presidency as a grave threat to the U.S., citing his statements calling into question long-tanding national security policies and alliances and even his support of the First Amendment.
ISIS’ ‘most valuable player’
But Trump is reacting by trying to outdo those accusations with mirrored claims of his own about the danger Clinton would present.
Where Clinton and many Democrats have accused Trump of parroting President Vladimir Putin of Russia, for example, Trump is suggesting Clinton sides with America’s enemies.
Most notably, instead of saying her policies as secretary of state helped contribute to the rise of the Islamic State — he called her a “founder” of the terrorist group, and someone who should be named its “most valuable player” for having done so.
Trump made the claim last week and repeated it, using harsher terms, Wednesday and Thursday in a string of appearances and interviews.
At the same time, Trump is accusing Clinton, without evidence, of intending to abolish the Second Amendment — something she denies and would be constitutionally unable to do as president.
Trump suggested turnabout was fair play, mocking Democrats for crying foul for his remarks about Clinton and ISIS.
“They said it about me, it’d be fine,” he said at an appearance in Florida on Thursday afternoon. “If I say something about them, it’s terrible.”
Still, these hyperbolic claims have drawn attention from issues that Trump’s campaign could use to gain traction against Clinton: He has made only fleeting reference to recently released State Department emails revealing efforts to obtain a meeting for a political supporter, a subject the Clinton campaign has sought to avoid.
Even as he seeks to vilify Clinton, Trump on Thursday sounded uncharacteristically fatalistic about the election.
In an interview with CNBC, he acknowledged the possibility that he could lose but insisted he intends to stick with his unorthodox style.
He pledged to “just keep doing
the same thing I’m doing right now,” adding that he is the only presidential candidate who tells things “straight” and is “a truthteller.”
“At the end, it’s either going to work or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice long vacation,” said Trump, who has rarely conceded the possibility of defeat.
The increased attacks on Clinton — and on President Barack Obama, who also was accused by Trump of being a “founder of ISIS” at a rally in Sunrise, Fla., on Wednesday night — came after Trump’s advisers suggested he had achieved a new level of discipline in delivering a fairly comprehensive economic address Monday in Detroit.
‘Trash-talking’ the U.S.
Then on Tuesday, Trump warned a crowd in North Carolina that it would be “a horrible day” if Clinton were elected and picked a tiebreaking justice for the Supreme Court.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said. “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The remark set off a wave of criticism from Democrats and others who said Trump had been suggesting violence against Clinton or the judges she might appoint. Trump angrily denied this.
Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser for Clinton, accused Trump of “echoing the talking points of Putin and our adversaries to attack American leaders and American interests.”
“This is another example of Donald Trump trash-talking the United States,” Sullivan said in a statement. “It goes without saying that this is a false claim from a presidential candidate with an aversion to the truth and an unprecedented lack of knowledge.”