Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told supporters Saturday that he has the best plan to beat the Islamic State, but he’s keeping it secret to avoid tipping off terrorists.
“We’re gonna beat ISIS very, very quickly folks. It’s gonna be fast,” Trump said at a Saturday morning rally in Waterbury, Conn. “I have a great plan. It’s going to be great. They ask, ‘What is it?’ Well, I’d rather not say. I’d rather be unpredictable.”
Reflecting on his primary campaign, Trump said that this strategy of not releasing his Islamic State strategy got him “killed” by opponents who genuinely thought that he did not have a plan for dismantling the group.
But the businessman claimed that unpredictability is the most important part of defeating an enemy.
“I don’t want to be like Barack Obama where he announced a few months ago we are sending 50 soldiers, our finest, to Iraq and Syria,” Trump said. “Why do you announce that? Why do you tell the enemy that your sending people over there and they now have a target on their backs?”
Trump said Saturday that his plan would be slow-moving, as he has always been a skeptic of intervention in the Middle East. As an example, he said that he opposed the invasion of Iraq. Trump’s claim he opposed the war has been questioned. In interviews at the time he sounded supportive of the war in its early stages. He became critical as public sentiment turned against the war.
Trump said Saturday, without specifics, that he will make the American military so powerful that “no one is going to mess with us.”
