Having called for his Presidential opponent Hillary Clinton to be assassinated just a few days ago, it’s hard to say whether Donald J Trump has upped the ante at last night's Florida rally, or just continued the ante at a steadily alarming rate with his latest attack on President incumbent Barack Obama, calling him the (verbatim) “founder of Isis.”
“Isis is honoring President Obama,” Trump said of Islamic State. “He is the founder of Isis. He founded Isis. And, I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”
Now his team might try and spin what Trump means here as the foreign policy pursued by the Obama administration indirectly causing the rise of Islamic State, but what Donald has actually done here is literally just say “Obama founded ISIS.” Over and over again.
This is combined with his current dog-whistle tactic of pointedly referring to Obama by his full name (Barack Hussein Obama) to imply a hidden connection to the Muslim faith, from which Trump then insinuates sympathy towards the terrorist organisation.
With several months of the election still to go, it’s almost morbidly intriguing to ponder which new depths Trump will plumb and whether there is any torpedo he can seemingly fire at his own campaign that will actually sink it.