In a Tuesday morning tweet, President Donald Trump falsely blamed his predecessor Barack Obama for over a hundred Guantanamo Bay detainees who returned to terrorism following their release.
Trump tweeted the following:
122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017
Trump’s figure is actually right on the nose: a 2016 Office of the Director of National Intelligence report found that 122 former Gitmo detainees have returned to the battlefield. But his attribution of their release to Obama is false; the vast majority of those detainees were released under President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican. Only nine of the 122 were released by Obama.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s tweet came thirty minutes after a Fox & Friends segment cited the exact same stat (Fox News did not incorrectly blame Obama, however).
Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism pic.twitter.com/y9jb420fFZ
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 7, 2017
[image via screengrab]
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