Trump insists ISIS is destroyed and North Korea isn’t a nuclear threat in tweetstorm of lies

Trump

President Donald Trump took to Twitter Wednesday morning while watching Fox & Friends to brag about his handling of North Korea and ISIS in Syria, insisting that everything is fine despite what U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday.

For months, Trump has been insisting that ISIS is defeated in Syria and claiming that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat to the United States.

On Wednesday, Trump did more of the same in a new Twitter rant.

First of all, ISIS was not “running rampant” in Syria when he took office. Under former President Obama’s strategy, which Trump continues to benefit from, ISIS had already been greatly reduced.

As for ISIS being defeated, that claim was directly contradicted by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday.

“ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria,” Coats said, adding that the terrorist group “very likely will continue to pursue external attacks from Iraq and Syria against regional and Western adversaries, including the United States,” and “has returned to its guerrilla warfare roots while continuing to plot attacks and direct its supporters worldwide.”

That doesn’t sound like a defeated or destroyed ISIS. It sounds like Trump got busted for lying by his own intelligence officials and is doubling down on his lies.

As for North Korea, Trump has been getting duped for months as dictator Kim Jong Un continues to manufacture missile facilities and add to his nuclear stockpile while moving the goalposts on denuclearization, which now includes a demand that the United States remove all military forces from the region as a prerequisite, a move that would put our key allies of South Korea and Japan at risk.

During the hearing on Tuesday, Coats also contradicted Trump’s North Korea claims.

“We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival,” Coats said, adding that the “assessment is bolstered by observation of some activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.”

CIA Director Gina Haspel warned the committee that North Korea “is committed to developing a long-range nuclear-armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States.”

Clearly, Trump is lying through his teeth about two major national security issues in an effort to brag about his foreign policy. But all he’s really doing is undermining our national security, which puts millions of American lives in jeopardy. Trump is pretending that he has dealt with ISIS and North Korea successfully, and if he continues to do so the threat of a terrorist attack or nuclear strike on American soil increases. Trump needs to stop lying and start actually putting the safety of the American people first instead of his ego.

 

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