Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:02 pm
A hurricane of controversy has surrounded Donald Trump’s deteriorating campaign this week after his suggestion that “Second Amendment people” assassinate Hillary Clinton and, more recently, his claim that President Obama is the “founder” of ISIS.
While Trump has since walked back the ISIS comments as sarcasm, he still claims he was “not that sarcastic” about the horrific charges he asserted against the sitting President of the United States.
It appears that the Obama-led military isn’t at all fazed by Trump’s ridiculous, fact-free remark.
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Just yesterday, the Pentagon announced that Hafiz Saeed Khan, the leader of ISIS in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was killed in a U.S. strike last month.
According to a statement by Pentagon official Gordon Trowbridge:
Khan was known to directly participate in attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, and the actions of his network terrorized Afghans, especially in Nangarhar.
Nangarhar province has been a hotbed for ISIL-Khorasan activity since the summer of 2015. ISIL-K uses the area to train, equip, disseminate and control fighter pipelines, providing ISIL-K commanders throughout Afghanistan with a continuous supply of enemy fighters from this province.
Khan’s death affects ISIL-K recruiting efforts and will disrupt ISIL-K’s operations in Afghanistan and the region.
As the Guardian noted, “The death of Hafiz Saeed Khan – confirmed by a US defence official on Friday night – is a blow to efforts by Isis to expand its control from its Middle East territory into Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
The removal of this senior ISIS leader is good news in the continued fight against the brutal terror organization, and it’s also more proof that Trump’s attacks on President Obama’s patriotism and determination to stop terrorism are completely baseless.
Not only did this president authorize the killing of Obama bin Laden – something George W. Bush failed to do in the seven years following the Sept. 11 attacks  – but ISIS leaders across the Middle East have routinely been the target of successful airstrikes in the Obama years.
According to the military, the United States has carried out almost 140 airstrikes against ISIS in Afghanistan over the past eight months alone. A U.S.-backed operation two weeks ago also took out hundreds of ISIS fighters in the country – a huge setback for the terror group.
In Iraq, one senior U.S. official said in late June that ISIS has lost nearly 50 percent of its territory in the country and is down to as few as 18,000 fighters – a major drop from the 33,000 that made up the terror organization in 2014.
While the threat of terrorism is still very real, the continued allegations that Barack Obama is somehow sympathetic to terrorists, to the point of being called an ISIS “founder” or “MVP,” have no basis in any existing reality.
Donald Trump and the Republicans who aid and abet his dangerous campaign can continue to launch unfounded attacks on Obama all they want, but the current commander-in-chief is likely too busy carrying out attacks on American enemies to notice.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
