Donald Trump says he was 'right' about his Obama-backs-ISIS insinuation

Donald Trump took some heat for darkly insinuating that President Obama is a covert Muslim who secretly and actively supports Islamist terrorism, so he's apparently decided to make his critique explicit. "An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump 'may have insinuated about @POTUS,'" Trump tweeted Wednesday. "But he's right." The tweet links to a Breitbart News article that points to a declassified August 2012 cable from the Defense Intelligence Agency, with Breitbart interpreting it as proof that "the Obama administration was actively supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq" (AQI), the precursor to the Islamic State.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Trump was retweeting a message from another user, which might explain the use of the third person, but did not disown the message. "Trump has offered no verifiable information to back up his assertions," The Associated Press says. "His theory was not supported by the document cited in the report he linked to Wednesday." The cable, which said it was an "information report, not finally evaluated intelligence," was about the "general situation" in Iraq and Syria at the time. Regarding the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad, it lists as the major drivers "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI," then says, "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition, while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime."

Robert Ford, a U.S. ambassador to Syria who quit the State Department in 2012, tells The Washington Post that the cable, obtained by Judicial Watch, has been "circulating on the internet for years," and that "Assad government apologists and people connected to the Maliki government in Iraq have posted it and linked to it," referring to ex-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "It has been used as 'evidence' to show that the Americans are really working with the Islamic State against Assad," Ford said, adding that he's "90 percent sure" the cable came from a U.S. military official in Baghdad, passing on information from an Iraqi military briefing. "To be really cynical," Ford said, "it's the Iraqis giving the Iranian line."

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And now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who will start getting U.S. intelligence briefings in July, is giving the Iranian line to Americans. And it isn't falling on fallow ground. "I think he's dead on the money," Brad Butler, 45, told AP outside Wednesday's Trump rally in Atlanta. "So this is Islamic terror and this is his religion. Why would he (Obama) be mad at it?"