‘Please, Allah, make Trump president’: Clinton says Trump win would give ISIS ‘a great gift’
Islamic State jihadists are praying to Allah and “rooting” for Donald Trump to become the next president, according to Hillary Clinton, who lambasted her rival’s “demagoguery” and use of the phrase “radical Islam.”
“Basically, the jihadists see this as a great gift,” the Democratic presidential nominee told Israel’s Channel 2 News. “They are saying ‘Oh, please Allah, make Trump president of America.’”
In her statement, aired Thursday, the former secretary of state referred to Matt Olsen, former chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, who recently wrote that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) spokespeople were supporting Trump.
“[Olsen] quoted ISIS spokespeople rooting for Donald Trump’s victory, because Trump has made Islam and Muslims part of his campaign,” Clinton said.
In his article titled “Why ISIS supports Donald Trump,” published in TIME this week, Olsen wrote about Islamic State’s “propaganda machine,” as jihadists turn to social media to “advocate for Trump.”
“ISIS is working to drum up support for the candidate it has called ‘the perfect enemy,’” Olsen wrote.
In not using the phrase “radical Islam,” Clinton told the Israeli news station she would take a different approach to defeating the Islamic State than Trump.
“I’m not interested in giving aid and comfort to their evil ambitions,” Clinton said.
“I want to defeat them,” she said. “I want to end their reign of terror. I don’t want them to feel as though they can be getting more recruits because of our politics.”
She did not hesitate to share her own plan for confronting IS, saying she would focus on boosting up what the US has already been doing in Syria and Iraq, vowing to “intensify our air campaign, more support on the ground to the Arab and Kurdish fighters,” while also “pushing ISIS towards the Syrian border and pushing them out of Raqqa toward the Iraqi border.”
“We have got to specifically target [Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi. We need to go after the head, just like we finally got [Osama] bin Laden,” she said.
“I still believe that we need leverage to deal with the Russians and the Iranians and the Syrians, whether it’s a no-fly zone or some other tool,” she continued.
Also Thursday, Clinton spoke about fighting IS during a brief press conference in New York, during which she also blasted Trump and his “admiration” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller has dismissed Clinton’s accusations of the GOP nominee, calling them “unhinged and dishonest” attacks.
