Trump won't stop saying Obama is linked to ISIS

Donald Trump bolstered his claim to the title of Conspiracy Theorist in Chief on Wednesday when he said President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton cofounded the Islamic State.

“He’s the founder of ISIS," Trump said of Obama. "He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS.”

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Then, he added, "I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton."

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt suggested to Trump on Thursday that perhaps the GOP presidential candidate meant to say that Obama created a power vacuum in parts of the Middle East, which ISIS filled.

"No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS," Trump said. "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."

Tweet may have been deleted

In a separate interview on CNBC, Trump did (sort of) say he meant Obama's foreign policy decisions led to the creation of ISIS, but Trump has a history of saying outrageous things only to pull back into somewhat less outrageous territory.

And he especially has a history of tying Obama and Clinton to ISIS.

In a July interview with 60 Minutes, he said Clinton "invented ISIS with her stupid policies."

In January, he said Obama and Clinton "created" ISIS.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the National Association of Home Builders, on Aug. 11, in Miami Beach, Florida. Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

In no reality is this true. Take it from the guy who literally wrote the book on ISIS, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick:

"It’s like saying that Ronald Reagan is the founder of al-Qaeda because the arms he sent to the mujahideen in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion led to the creation of al-Qaeda," Warrick said in a Washington PostQ&A on Trump's comments. "It’s a ludicrous claim."

On Clinton, Warrick said it makes even less sense.

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"Within the [Obama] administration, Clinton was one of the loudest forces for keeping a residual force in Iraq and for intervening in Syria, such as arming the rebels," he said. "So the criticism especially does not apply to her, since she advocated a more hawkish policy than was undertaken by Obama."

Trump could have said that Obama's decision to move United States troops out of Iraq contributed to an environment where ISIS was allowed to grow in that country (although Trump supported getting troops out of Iraq). He could have said that Obama's inability to mount a military force to stabilize the Syrian civil war allowed ISIS to roam free there. Both arguments are subject to plenty of counterpoints, but Trump could have at least argued them with some legitimacy.

But Obama and Clinton as the founder of ISIS?

No, Barack Obama is not the founder of ISIS.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016

Experts point to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as the true beginning of the group. Clinton, as a senator from New York, voted to provide then-President George W. Bush with the authority to use force in Iraq, though she did so along with many others. Obama said "the case was not made" for an invasion of Iraq. Trump didn't support the invasion.

Not only is Trump's claim devoid of factual basis, but it's a way for him to continue accusing Obama of sympathizing with extremists more than Americans.

Trump does this a lot.

After an ISIS-inspired gunman killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando earlier this year, Trump implied that Obama sympathized with the murderer.

In December, Trump denounced Obama for not using the term "radical Islamic terrorism" to describe extremist attacks, and then went a little further. "He refuses to say it," Trump said. "There's something going on with him that we don't know about."

This, of course, invites all sorts of people to proffer conspiracies as to what Obama is hiding. But it's unsurprising that Trump engages in this kind of conspiratorial language. He did it long before he was a candidate for president.

Trump infamously would not let go of the conspiracy that Obama was not born in the U.S. and was therefore ineligible to become president.

And with his statements about Obama and Clinton co-founding ISIS, he's engaged conspiracy theories that have sputtered along for years.

One of the most prominent conspiracy theories stems from fake excerpts from a fake Clinton memoir in which she supposedly said the U.S. built up ISIS to spread American influence in the Middle East.

This rumor has been widely debunked by people in the Middle East and elsewhere. But, at the time, it rang alarm bells that reached as far as the Lebanese foreign ministry.

In giving credence to such rumors, Trump is again building their legitimacy.

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