Donald Trump has had a history of stretching the truth to the point of even promoting some farfetched conspiracy theories, and this week he has been promoting a few new ones.
One theory he promoted earlier this week is that President Obama has been supportive of ISIS for years, and that this is the reason that he does not call them radical Islamic terrorists.
This all started with an interview that Trump did on Fox News on Monday.
"People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable. There's something going on," Trump said.
He doubled-down on this remark by tweeting an article of what he believes is proof of his wild theory.
An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump "may have insinuated about @POTUS." But he's right: https://t.co/bIIdYtvZYw
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016
The document that the article claimed proved their case was a intelligent document from 2012 that Judicial Watch obtained last year, as a result of a lawsuit they had. This document explained what the ground situation was in Syria and Iraq after the 2012 rebellion against Bashir al-Assad, and it lists several groups including al- Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the predecessor to ISIS. The document explains how AQI was one of the leading forces in rebellion.
Trump sees this memo as showing a link between Obama and ISIS. Not only is this conspiracy theory incredibly insulting to the President, but it's not even remotely close to being true. Many national security experts have already debunked this theory.
"The United States has never backed AQI and has never backed ISIS," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He also explained that AQI was not part of the opposition groups that the US decided to support back in 2012.
John Limbert, an international affairs professor at the U.S. Naval Academy called it "another unsupportable conspiracy theory."
Another theory that Trump has been pushing this week is that the opposition research on him that leaked was actually leaked by the DNC themselves and not the Russians hackers that have taken credit.
"This is all information that has been out there for many years," said Trump. "Much of it is false and/or entirely inaccurate. We believe it was the DNC that did the 'hacking' as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn't hack Crooked Hillary's 33,000 missing emails."
The 200-page document that leaked was essentially the DNC's playbook for the general election campaign against Trump. Keep in mind, this research probably cost them thousands, if not millions of dollars, and it's extremely unlikely that the DNC would leak their own strategy. Meanwhile, Trump is the candidate currently experiencing much higher disapproval ratings than Clinton.
Trump has a combined true and mostly true rating of only 20 percent on PolitiFact, a non-partisan fact-checking website. Let's not forget he once accused Obama of lying about where he was born, and accused Ted Cruz's father of being involved in the JFK assassination.
Make sure to fact check "The Donald's" statements before you take them to heart.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member