Donald Trump has come under blistering attack from all quarters for characterizing President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the founders of ISIS, but at least one national security expert is coming to his defense, saying that bombastic billionaire’s analysis is “absolutely right.”
Terrorism expert and author Dr. Sebastian Gorka appeared on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. Friday morning to discuss the controversy over Trump’s remarks.
The Donald is “absolutely right,” he told host Stuart Varney. “If you’re talking about facilitating the rise of the most powerful jihadi insurgency in the world today — if that’s what Mr. Trump meant — he nailed it.”
He said, “When this senator from Illinois became the president of America, there was no such thing as ISIS. There was a regional franchise of al Qaeda called al Qaeda in Iraq — limited solely to Iraq. After he became president, after he appointed Hillary Clinton as his secretary of State, after we pulled our troops out of Iraq, [after] our disastrous policies in Syria and Libya, this franchise became a multi-nation-region insurgency capturing territory in Iraq, in Syria in Libya, having a franchise in Nigeria in the form of Boko Haram.” Gorka added that ISIS has now recruited more than 80,000 jihadis and has more than six million people living on its territory. “That happened under President Obama’s watch,” Gorka concluded.
It should be noted that in 2009, the Iraq War was essentially over. Al Qaeda in Iraq was beaten down and in full retreat. Now the group has morphed into “the most powerful jihadi insurgency the world has ever seen,” as Gorka calls it.
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