Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson agrees with GOP nominee Donald Trump that President Obama founded ISIS, but he does not believe it was intentional.
“Unintentionally,” Johnson replied on MSNBC Thursday morning when asked if Obama was the founder of ISIS before being pressed for more details.
“It wasn’t intentional, but you can’t make it up. When they go in and they support the opposition in Libya and Syria, and the opposition is aligned with ISIS, and we arm the opposition and they lose those arms to ISIS, unintentionally,” Johnson said.
Trump first called Obama the founder of ISIS on Wednesday night during a campaign rally in Sunrise, Florida.
“ISIS is honoring President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS,” Trump said. “I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”
Trump also referred to the president as “Barack Hussein Obama” throughout the South Florida rally. He appeared on CNBC Thursday morning to double down on his ISIS comments.
“He was the founder of ISIS, absolutely,” Trump said on the business network. “The way he removed our troops — you shouldn’t have gone in. I was against the war in Iraq. Totally against it.”
Trump continued: “That mistake was made. It was a horrible mistake — one of the worst mistakes in the history of our country. We destabilized the Middle East and we’ve been paying the price for it for years. He was the founder — absolutely, the founder. In fact, in sports they have awards, he gets the most valuable player award. Him and Hillary. I mean she gets it, too. I gave them co-founder if you really looked at the speech.”