Donald Trump’s claim on Friday that he was merely being “sarcastic” in accusing President Barack Obama of establishing a terrorist group was his latest attempt to blame others for the uproar over what he says. It’s an instinct that Trump’s opponents say a president can’t possess. Some Republicans seem to have the same concern.
This time, it followed two days of critical headlines and Democratic outrage over Trump’s claim that Obama was the “founder” of the ISIS group. As Trump repeated the claim more than a dozen times, interviewers sought to ensure Trump wasn’t being misconstrued. Surely, they offered, he meant Obama’s policies had enabled the extremist group’s rise.
“No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do,” Trump said, using one acronym for the group.
Then an about-face Friday. “THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?” he tweeted.
Hours later, he told a rally in Pennsylvania he was “obviously being sarcastic - but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”
That it took Trump two days to walk back his widely debunked remark - and then walk back the walk-back - was worrying for Republicans who see such missteps as playing to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s advantage. Equally worrying for some was the fact that he again would not take responsibility for his words.
It was only two days earlier that Trump blamed the media for making much ado about nothing after he suggested during a rally that gun rights enthusiasts might find a way to stop Clinton if elected.
Clinton, whose lead over Trump has widened in recent polls of the most competitive states, has seized on those and other eyebrow-raising comments to portray the reality TV star as lacking the temperament to run the nation - Trump has his own argument for why she’s unfit to do so. She’s hammered him for avoiding accountability for his actions.
To that end, Clinton’s campaign on Friday intensified pressure on Trump to release his tax returns, while disclosing her 2015 filings and a decade of returns from her running mate. The filing shows that the Clintons earned $10.6 million and paid a federal tax rate of 34.2 percent last year.
Trump has refused to make his filings public, saying they’re under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and he’ll release them only once that review is complete. All major US presidential candidates in modern history have released their returns.
