October 14, 2016
In the latest presidential debate, GOP nominee Donald Trump Sunday lauded Iran for pummeling the Islamic State, something the US government says Iran is not doing.
Iran claims it is attacking the forces of the Islamic State, while the United States stands by and does nothing to hurt it. Trump echoed the Iranian propaganda line.
Trump also asserted that IS is on the march and a major threat to the world, although almost all independent analysts say the group has been retreating for more than a year and now controls only a fraction of what it once did.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at one point commented that Russia “isn’t interested” in the Islamic State and its military actions are aimed at destroying the Syrian rebel groups that threaten Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump disputed that. “I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS. And Iran is killing ISIS. And those three have now lined up because of our weak foreign policy.”
This view was almost uniformly rejected by assorted fact-checkers reviewing comments made in the debate Sunday night. Almost all analysts say Syria, Russia and Iran are focused in Syria on defeating rebels opposed to Assad and generally ignore the Islamic State. In fact, the Treasury Department reported last year that the Assad government was the largest buyer of oil from the Islamic State, helping to fund it.
Trump jumped on the Islamic State when he was asked a question about crude language he used with regard to women in a 2005 tape that surfaced last week. Trump briefly responded to the question and then shifted gears to talk about the Islamic State.
“Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it,” he said of the tape. “I hate it. But it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment [by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton]. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS.”
Later he complained that Clinton as secretary of state toppled Moammar Qadhdhafi from power in Libya and, as a result, “It’s a mess. And, by the way, ISIS has a good chunk of their oil.”
Again, the fact-checkers said Trump was all wrong. The Islamic State has sent some of its people to Libya and they have occupied parts of the coastline, but they have never seized even a single oilfield.
Trump has long criticized Clinton for involving the United States in Libya and helping to topple Qadhdhafi. But a 2011 video tape shows him urging the United States to send troops into Libya, something the Obama Administration refused to do. “We should go in,” Trump said. “We should stop this guy, which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically.”
In Sunday’s debate, Trump periodically repeated his criticism of the nuclear deal with Iran, but never said that he would tear up the agreement. In fact, he never said what he would do. He simply complained about the agreement. “When I look at the Iran deal and how bad a deal it is for us, it’s a one-sided transaction where we’re giving back $150 billion to a terrorist state, really, the Number One terror state.”
A question from a Muslim American asked Trump how he would address Islamophobia in the United States. In his answer, Trump put the burden on Muslims in the United States, saying they had to help law enforcement by telling what they know about terrorists. Many law officers have said they get substantial help from the Muslim community. But Trump argued otherwise.
He repeated a charge he has made in many speeches that before the San Bernardino shooting last December many Muslims who knew the couple “saw the bombs all over the apartment” but never told law enforcement. But police have said they found no one who saw any bombs.
