SUNRISE, Fla. — Addressing a raucous crowd of Floridians Wednesday night, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said President Obama was the founder of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL or ISIS, and Hillary Clinton was its co-founder.
"In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama. He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder. He founded ISIS," Trump said.
In the past, Trump has accused his rival Clinton of founding the extremist group, which has taken over swaths of Syria and neighboring Iraq. "I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton," he said Wednesday.
Trump also called the president by his full legal name — Barack Hussein Obama — while speaking of the crisis in Crimea.
Trump said the the media were "disgusting" and "dishonest" for its coverage of his comments about Clinton and the Second Amendment. Some took those comments to mean he advocated violence against his Democratic opponent.
Trump told a North Carolina audience Tuesday that "Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."
Critics claim Trump's words urged violence against Clinton. Trump later said he meant gun owners could exert political pressure to protect their rights.
The flap bothered the Trump faithful gathered in Sunrise, about 20 minutes inland from Fort Lauderdale, not one bit. Their anger, and the anger emanating from the podium, was directed at the media that seized upon the story.
"Look at the way they covered that story yesterday. Was that disgusting?" Trump asked the BB&T crowd.
"The media is incredibly dishonest … almost as crooked as crooked Hillary Clinton," he said to cheers.
In fact, dating back to at least the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last month, mocking, deriding and generally dismissing the media has been a staple of the Trump campaign.
And the more the media attack Trump, it seems, the more his most ardent supporters — like those who dodged afternoon thunderstorms to see him in Sunrise — love him.
Sharon Day, a Republican National Committee member from Florida, scolded the media, to the delight of the crowd, before Trump took the stage.
"Report the facts rather than just the talking points the Democrats give them," she said.
YouTube star Lynette "Diamond" Hardaway was even more blunt. "We will not allow the media to keep feeding us a narrative full of lies."
Trump used Wednesday's appearance to try to refocus the narrative on another story in the news, the disclosure of emails showing contacts between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of State. Trump called it "pay for play" and suggested further revelations will hurt Clinton.
"Maybe there's more to come," Trump said.
On social media, the event drew comparisons to Hillary Clinton's appearance in Orlando, where the father of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen was seen in the background. Disgraced Florida congressman Mark Foley sat behind Trump in Sunrise. Foley resigned from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after allegations that he had sent sexually suggestive emails and instant messages to teen Congressional pages.
After that, Trump launched into his trademark unscripted campaign pitch, moving from one topic to another — a wall at the Mexican border, better trade deals, repealing the Affordable Care Act, stopping Common Core, blocking immigration of unscreened immigrants from countries wracked by terrorism — all of them red meat for his fans.
Addressing the persistent plaint that his temperament is not suitable for the nation's highest office, Trump turned the tables on Clinton.
"I don't like her temperament. Her temperament is the temperament of a loser. We need a tough guy. My temperament is going to win for us folks," Trump said. "They (terrorists) are chopping off heads and you don't like my tone?"
As the Democratic National Convention came to a close in July, his response to Gold Star father Khizr Khan, a featured speaker on the event's last evening, created a firestorm akin to the one arising from the Second Amendment remarks this week.
But his remarks don't drive away his crowds. At the Sunrise rally, Gold Star mother Beth Agami from nearby Parkland was among the several thousand people who filed in to see Trump speak. The Khan controversy didn't shake her confidence in the candidate.
"I have mixed feelings about that," she said. "His answer should have been, simply, he was sorry for their loss and left it at that. That's not going to stop me from supporting him (Trump). The other side (Khan) had issues, too," said Agami, whose son was killed while serving in the Army in Iraq in 2007.
Polls show Trump's support slipping since the Republican convention, but you wouldn't know it listening to the crowd at the BB&T Center on Wednesday.
They loved Trump and Trump loved them right back.
"I heard the most loyal people are the supporters of Trump, and I believe it," he said.
Follow Brent Batten on Twitter: @NDN_BrentBatten
