As the opening encounter in a long process to select the Republican and Democratic nominees for the US presidential race begins in Iowa on February 1, accusations are beginning to fly thick and fast, with billionaire businessman Donald Trump asserting that it’s the policies of President Barack Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that have “created ISIS”.
“They’ve created ISIS. Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama,” Trump charged at a campaign rally in Biloxi, Mississippi on Saturday, clearly upping the ante against the Democratic front-runner, who had recently commented that Trump’s hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric was only helping ISIS recruit more terrorists.
While Republicans have for long blamed Obama’s “precipitous withdrawal” of US forces from Iraq for the rise of ISIS, Trump is perhaps the first to go to the extent of asserting that the Obama-Hillary policies have “created” ISIS. He blamed the Obama administration for not having done anything to neutralize ISIS’ handle on oil.
In recent days, Trump and Clinton have sparred fiercely, beginning with the Hillary description that the billionaire businessman was turning out to be the “biggest recruiter” for ISIS. Their exchanges have shifted to pointed attacks on sexism, with Trump dragging in her husband Bill Clinton and commenting on his “terrible record of women abuse”.
Renewing his assertion that Hillary Clinton “shouldn’t be allowed to run” because of her controversial use of a private email system during her stint as Secretary of State, Trump thundered at his Mississippi rally: “She should be in jail, by the way, for what she did. Everybody knows she should be in jail. What she did with the emails is a disgrace.”
In a Sunday morning interview to CBS, Trump shrugged off the use of his recent anti-Muslim remark by al-Qaeda affiliate Al Shabab in a video aimed at recruiting more jehadis.
“look, there’s a problem,” Trump said when asked about the video, adding, “I bring it up. Other people have called me and say, ‘You have guts to bring it up because frankly, it’s true but nobody wants to get involved. Now people are getting involved.”
When asked if it concerned him that his comments were essentially being used to recruit more terrorists, Trump commented: “They use other people, too. What am I going to doIJ I have to say what I have to say. And you (know) what I have to sayIJ There’s a problem. We have to find out what is a problem. And we have to solve that problem.”
Trump, at his Mississippi rally, also came down hard on President Obama’s plan for executive action to tighten gun control measures since the US Congress has for long been dragging its feet on the issue.
Asserting that what Obama plans to do this week would be “an assault on the Second Amendment” that gives Americans the right to bear arms, Trump said he, as the next President, would veto the measure. “He can’t do that….I will veto. I will unsign that so fast,” Trump remarked.