During yesterday morning's edition of Fox News Sunday, host Mike Wallace asked Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri if Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton should share “some responsibility” for the rise of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) since she was serving as President Barack Obama's secretary of state when the terrorist organization was founded.
The Democratic senator responded by attacking Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and “his best buddy” -- Vladimir Putin, the current president of the Russian Federation -- as the real founders of ISIS, which “probably would be more accurate than calling out the commander-in-chief in that way.”
Wallace began the discussion by repeating Trump's charge that Clinton was one of the founders of ISIS, a claim the host noted was “over the top” even though she was in office when the Obama administration pulled all U.S. troops out of Iraq.
In addition, Clinton “was pushing President Obama to intervene in Libya, which helped create a vacuum that ISIS has helped fill,” he noted.
“Well, first of all,” McCaskill replied, “the language that Donald Trump has used as it relates to ISIS is disrespectful to the military that is out there fighting ISIS every day.”
She also stated:
Just last week, Chris, we took out eight tankers in ISIS, we took out mortar, we hit a tactical unit. We have shrunk the area of ISIS in Iraq by 40 percent. We'd shrunk the area of ISIS in Syria ... by 20 percent.
The men and women that are risking their lives every day through the orders of their commander-in-chief ... when they hear a presidential candidate try to act like our president is on the bad guys' side, how do you think that makes them feel as they're out there in the field fighting?
Wallace replied: “In fairness, Senator, he isn't criticizing her in any way or denigrating the work of the military. He's saying that President Obama and Hillary Clinton made some bad decisions that have led to the present situation.”
“Well, ... there's a lot of reasons that ISIS rose up,” McCaskill asserted. “One of them was the Status Of Forces Agreement known as S.O.F.A. that (former President George W.) Bush negotiated. We couldn't leave our troops in Iraq even if the president wanted to because the parliament in Iraq was refusing to give them immunity.”
She then tried to attack her Republican opponent by stating: “Now, Trump probably thinks the S.O.F.A. is a gilded couch at Mar-A-Lago (a large estate in Palm Beach, Florida). He probably doesn't know what S.O.F.A. is. But that was a very relevant part of this.”
“It was also important to realize that Assad (Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the president of Syria and commander-of-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces),” McCaskill declared, “by what he did in his country, allowed ISIS to move into what was then Iraq -- al-Qaeda in Iraq into Syria and get strongholds and recruit.”
“That was the work and support of Putin, who is Trump's best buddy,” she grumbled, “so you can say Trump and his friend Putin are the founder(s) of ISIS, which probably would be more accurate than calling out the commander-in-chief in that way.”
“Well,” Wallace joked, “I’m glad for that last comment. That will certainly get Donald Trump's attention.”
Despite McCaskill's outrageous claim, very few outlets in the “mainstream media” took note of her remarks. One of those was The Hill website, where Media Reporter Joe Concha declared on Monday: “Never before has it been so easy to point out the obvious, overwhelming hypocrisy that exists in coverage of this presidential election.”
“Exhibit A today,” Concha noted, “in what has become a series of almost-daily examples of media coverage of Trump and Clinton -- [whom] polls show are the most flawed and untrustworthy candidates to run for president in the history of the country -- comes in the form of Trump's inelegant and obviously inaccurate comments around President Obama being 'the founder of ISIS.'"
“Is that true?” he asked. “Absolutely not. And the media should take him to the mat for saying it and even repeating it when given the chance to clarify.”
“No worries. Almost all have across the board,” the reporter noted. “Especially CNN (the Cable News Network), which prides itself on instantaneous fact-checking via on-screen chyrons.”
Referring to a recent poll by the Associated Press, Concha noted: "Just six percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions.”
"In this presidential campaign year, Democrats were more likely to trust the news media than Republicans or independents," the AP also found.
“Gee, wonder why that is,” Concha concluded.
