Ignores history and facts
It’s hard to pinpoint if he simply lacks the intelligence to know his mouth is forever losing him votes and respect with the national electorate, or if he is just doing as he recently said he would, continuing with the style of attack that won over the Republican party faithful and gave him the nomination.
“At the end, it’s either going to work,” Trump told CNBC this week. “Or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice long vacation.”
Something that is catching up with Trump is that his path is strewn with flip-flips, to the nth degree, and while scattering policy positions like buckshot worked for the rank and file of the GOP, it isn’t working on the national stage. An examination of an utterance he made Tuesday leads to the discovery of a series of flip-flops and lies that surely will not fly with the American electorate.
The example comes by way of an attack on U.S. President Barack Obama, an attack that Trump likely settled on because of the magnitude of the subject matter – he’s desperate to stop the bleeding – and not because of the facts, for he failed to take note of his own stated position on the subject he attacked Obama on.
Trump said Obama founded ISIS, a movement that began in 2006 in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, long before Obama won the presidency. On numerous occasions this week he ignored history and the facts and stated Obama, along with Hillary Clinton, founded the movement that has caused terror in the Middle East and around the world.
Trump: supported withdrawal
Trump insists Obama founded ISIS because of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, completed in December of 2011. Not only is that an untrue connection but the withdrawal was widely supported, with many Republicans agreeing with bringing the soldiers home. And here’s a part of the Trump flip-flop scenario: Trump himself supported the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
“You know how they get out?” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blizter in 2007. “They get out. That’s how they get out. Declare victory and leave. Because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down.
“They’re in a civil war over there, Wolf,” Trump added. “There’s nothing we’re going to be able to do with a civil war. They are in a major civil war.” So by his own logic, Trump supported the founding of ISIS.
And here’s this: the pull-out began in 2007 during the Bush administration and an agreement on troop withdrawal was signed by Bush. That agreement covered 3 years and detailed how and when troops would leave. To some degree, President Obama merely presided over agreements made by the party of Donald Trump.
More Trump flip-flops
There are still more flip-flops on this same subject, such as Trump being on record saying the invasion of Iraq, not the pulling out of troops years later, was the action that lead to the creation of ISIS (here many historians agree with him). Indeed, just last February The Donald blamed the invasion of Iraq by the U.S., along with the Iraqi government, for creating ISIS.
Last February!
“We should have never, ever gone in,” Trump, who in 2003 supported the invasion, told a town hall meeting in South Carolina in February. “But we did. So we made a mistake. The country made a big mistake and started all this horrible thing that you see taking place, including ISIS.”
Has the flip-flopping stopped? Not really, not at all actually, for after saying he was merely being sarcastic by calling Obama the founder of ISIS he flip-flopped still again, sort of. At a rally Friday in Pennsylvania he said that the Obama remark was him “obviously being sarcastic — but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”
Incidentally, Trump claims he was one of those bright enough to oppose going into Iraq in the first place. That claim is false as despite great effort not one public pronouncement of his opposition to the war can be found until one year after it began. However, 6 months before the war, Trump told Howard Stern that he supported invading Iraq.
Second amendment remark
Of course the most controversial remark he managed to utter this week came at a North Carolina rally Tuesday. He lamented what “a horrible day” it would be if Hillary Clinton is elected and gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice because, he falsely claimed, she wants to abolish second amendment rights to bear arms.
Shockingly, he suggested violence might be a way of dealing with such an outcome. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” he said, adding the phrase that implies the use of violence. “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
While many no longer bother keeping track of Donald Trump’s controversial and often offensive utterances, that is one few will soon forget and that all will very much hope he flip-flops on.
