Donald Trump has held firm in his belief that ISIS would only become stronger if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were to be removed from power — a stance Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, defended Wednesday, BuzzFeed reports. "[Assad] is a very, very bad individual but he is an individual who, in his country, is keeping things in check because he is such a bad guy they're afraid of him," Lewandowski said.
Some political observers weren't so sure about that analysis:
Lewandowski went on to claim Trump's clairvoyance would prove him right on the matter of Assad. "You have someone with Donald Trump who has vision to predict what will happen in the future because he's done it so many times," Lewandowski explained. "He predicted Osama bin Laden in one of his books in the early 2000s and that he would be a major factor and what he's saying here is very clear: If Russia wants to go and bomb the hell out of ISIS, why would we not want that to happen. We don't even know — so many of these elected officials say, 'Well if we go and do that we're gonna go destabilize Syria and we're gonna put somebody else in and we're gonna get get rid of Assad.' Who? Who is the question."
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The conflict in Syria is now five years old, and has resulted in the death and displacement of millions of Syrians. In September, Assad only controlled about 25 percent of the country. Listen to Lewandowski's interview at BuzzFeed.
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