Hillary Clinton’s claim that Donald Trump is “becoming ISIS’s best recruiter” has sparked wide backlash against her presidential campaign.
Clinton made the comment in Saturday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire. Breitbart News, which immediately flagged the remark, found no available evidence that Trump’s comments on Islam have ever been featured in ISIS recruiting videos.
Now Clinton is feeling the fact-based pain of the Internet Age, as her campaign sputters to try to come up with some kind of explanation.
Even the left-wing Huffington Post shot Clinton down on the factual merits.
According to associate politics editor Marina Fang’s piece, “Hillary Clinton’s Claim That Donald Trump Is In ISIS Recruiting Videos Isn’t True. Not Yet, At Least”:
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton stretched the truth a bit during Saturday’s primary debate…
Fact-checkers soon noted that Clinton may have been referring to a hypothetical situation, and an article cited by her campaign quoted a few experts who have found no evidence of the videos so far.
Trump blasted Clinton as a “liar” in a Sunday show interview on Meet The Press.
“Nobody has been able to back that up. It’s nonsense. Just another Hillary lie,” Trump said. “She lies like crazy about everything. Whether it’s trips where she was being gunned down in a helicopter or an airplane, she’s a liar and everybody knows that. But she just made this up in thin air.”
Clinton campaign communications director Jen Palmieri struggled to explain what, exactly, Clinton meant.
“Well what they have said is that they are using him, they, he is being used in social media by ISIS as propaganda,” Palmieri told interviewer George Stephanopoulos Sunday.
“She didn’t have a particular video in mind but he’s being used in social media, um, and uh, you know, what they haven’t found is, this group hasn’t found the video Mr. Trump keeps talking about this alleged mystery video of thousands of people in [New] Jersey cheering, uh, collapse of the World Trade Center,” Palmieri added.