US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says President Barack Obama calls the Daesh terrorist group “ISIL” to annoy everyone.
“And he calls it ISIL. And the reason he calls it ISIL is he likes to bother everybody,” Trump told a Miami NBC affiliate on Thursday. “He’s like the only one who is still calling it ISIL.”
The Takfiri group calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is at times described as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, by the Western media.
But in the Islamic world, particularly in the Middle East region, the group is known by its Arabic language acronym Daesh.
President Obama and some other top officials of his administration like to refer to the terrorist group as ISIL, not as ISIS, as most Republicans, such as Trump, do.
On Wednesday, Trump accused Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton of founding Daesh in the Middle East region.
“He’s the founder of ISIS. He's the founder! He founded ISIS,” the real estate tycoon said during a rally in Florida. “I would say the co-founder would be ‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton.”
On Thursday, when Trump was told that his comments about Daesh sound inflammatory, he shot back, “Let them be inflammatory. I told the truth, I told the truth.”
“He is the founder of ISIS and Hillary Clinton is right there with him. She was a disaster as a senator from New York. All you have to do is to read the Washington post, who protects her all the time,” he added.
Daesh terrorists, many of whom were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, still control parts of Iraq and Syria. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in areas under their control.
They have been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all communities, including Shia and Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and Christians.
Since 2014, the United States and some of its allies have been carrying out airstrikes against purported Daesh positions in Iraq and Syria.
On August 1, the Pentagon announced that it had expanded its air war against Daesh into Libya, carrying out attacks in Sirte, the major stronghold of Daesh outside Iraq and Syria.