Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 5/4/2024; Author: Maida Salkanović
Following the terrorist attack in Moscow at the end of March, erroneous reports emerged alleging that Donald Trump had accused Barack Obama of being linked to ISIS and the attack orchestrated by its members.
On March 22, 2024, four gunmen launched an attack on over 6,000 attendees at a Picnic concert in Crocus City Hall, near Moscow. The assailants killed at least 143 people and injured others, also using explosives to ignite a large fire. Following the attack, the gunmen fled but were promptly apprehended. The extremist group known as the Islamic State, particularly its IS-K branch, claimed responsibility for the violence. Subsequently, Russian officials alleged that Ukraine, with support from the United States and Great Britain, orchestrated the attack, using IS-K merely as the executioners. These claims were firmly denied by the accused nations (1, 2, 3).
Speculations about Ukraine’s responsibility for the Moscow attack were perpetuated in domestic media, including false claims that one attacker held Ukrainian citizenship and that Oleksiy Danilov, the then-secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, admitted responsibility for the incident.
On March 25, 2024, the web portal Informer published an article falsely claiming that former US President Donald Trump declared after the Moscow attack that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the founders of ISIS.
Trump: Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS, and Washington claims that ISIS is behind the massacre in Moscow!
The text states the following:
Former US President Donald Trump, at his last pre-election rally, accused former President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of being the founders of the terrorist Islamic State! And Washington claims that ISIS is behind the massacre in Moscow!
Trump thus confirmed that the American state machinery controls the terrorist killing machine under the false flag of Islam and that ISIS is doing it at the expense of the United States and under the direction of its competent institutions.
To make everything even more interesting, Trump’s discovery comes after the massacre in Moscow in “Crocus City Hall” when terrorists killed at least 137 people and wounded more than 180! Just a few hours after the massacre, Washington claimed that it had reliable information that ISIS was behind the attack!
Translated into Serbian, Trump clearly told Russian leader Vladimir Putin that the massacre in “Crocus City Hall” was organized by American secret agencies, and that the direct perpetrators were members of the Islamic State!
What Trump Said and When
Claims that Donald Trump stated Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton founded ISIS were widely shared in various languages after the Moscow attack. Fact-checking platforms such as Snopes and websites like Times Now News and Hindustan Times scrutinized these claims for accuracy.
Trump did indeed say in his speech at a campaign rally on August 11, 2016, in Florida that Obama is the founder of ISIS. Trump then told his voters:
During a campaign rally on August 11, 2016, in Florida, Trump did state that Obama is the founder of ISIS. He then addressed his supporters, saying:
He’s the founder of ISIS, okay? (…) He’s the founder. He founded ISIS. (…) And I would say, the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.
The article published by The Guardian on August 11, 2016, included a recording of Trump stating that Obama is the founder of ISIS. In its coverage of Trump’s speech, Al Jazeera provided clarification on what Trump intended by his statement:
Trump has long blamed Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for pursuing Middle East policies that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was exploited by ISIL.
He has sharply criticised Obama for announcing that he would pull US troops out of Iraq, a decision that many Obama critics say created the kind of instability in which groups such as ISIL thrive.
Despite this, Trump said in an interview with host Hugh Hewitt that he meant “literally” that Obama was the founder of ISIS, but the context of his words shows that he was referring to Obama’s moves. However, Snopes explained the following in its analysis:
The context indicates he meant it metaphorically, his intent being to lay all the blame for the “fury” unleashed in the Middle East and the rise of ISIS violence after the Iraq War on the actions or inactions of the Democratic incumbent and presidential nominee (though in fact the war started during the administration of President George W. Bush).
Trump himself later wrote on Twitter that the remark about Obama, Clinton and ISIS was sarcastic.
Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) the “founder” of ISIS & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?
Photo: Screenshot, Twitter
Donald Trump did not address voters between the Moscow attack on March 22 and the publication of the article by Informer on March 25, as confirmed by his website. His last rally prior to the attack was on March 9, 2024, and recordings from this event show that he did not mention Obama. On March 16, 2024, Trump appeared as a special guest at a Political Action Committee (PAC) rally, and he did not discuss Obama or the attack then either. His most recent rally took place on April 2 in Wisconsin, where he again made no mention of the attack or Obama.
ISIS, short for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is a notorious terrorist group that aimed to establish an Islamic caliphate in those two countries. The group, also known as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), IS, and Daesh (the Arabic acronym of its full name), originated in the early 2000s as an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It came to global prominence in the mid-2010s by capturing large territories in Iraq and Syria and employing severe tactics, including mass executions and worldwide terrorist attacks. This led to international military interventions that significantly diminished its territorial hold and power by the late 2010s.
Therefore, the claim that Donald Trump declared Obama the founder of ISIS following the Moscow attack is rated as fake news and a manipulation of facts.