To the editor:

It may come as a surprise to those who know me as a left-wing, pink-in-the-center progressive that I am writing to defend Donald Trump’s assertion that President Obama was the founder of ISIS. Seven or eight years ago, when I was on an overseas tour to the Middle East, I attended the secret meeting that organized the terrorist organization that has become the scourge of our time. I was surprised when I saw that Obama was chairing this event and, even more so, that he was being nominated to head a committee to plan its agenda.

Hillary Clinton was also nominated to be the vice chair at that time, but there was some dissension in the ranks about whether or not she should assume primary leadership. Eventually Obama won because, after all, he was a Kenyan who had been raised as a Muslim and therefore carried more weight with the membership.

Hillary (who also attended) promised that she would do her part to ensure that Benghazi would remain vulnerable and that she would send some emails from time to time to radical Islamic terrorist groups because, she said, she “was going to erase the correspondence before anyone could find out what they said.”

Again, as a liberal, I would have found Mr. Trump’s otherwise bombastic, narcissistic and xenophobic rhetoric to be reprehensible, but this time, despite his sleazy attack on a Gold Star family, I’m forced to admit that he’s got the foundation of the ISIS story right.

Well, at least as right as he was about that birth certificate thing.

Tony Marconi

Delaware