Trump just can't seem to get his facts right. This morning he tweeted, “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!”
In reality, 93 percent – or 113 out of 122 – of those prisoners were released during the Bush administration, while only 9 were released under Obama's administration.
According to ABC:
According to a September 2016 report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 113 of those 122 detainees who have been confirmed as “re-engaging” were released from Guantanamo Bay under the Bush administration.
Only nine of them were released during the Obama administration.
The tweet came less than an hour after a segment on "Fox and Friends" about Mohammed Tahar, aka Yasir al-Silmi, a former Guantanamo detainee who was killed by a U.S. air strike in Yemen last week. Tahar had been transferred from Guantanamo to his home country of Yemen Dec. 17, 2009, during the Obama administration.
Trump also calls Obama's releasing of detainees a "terrible decision," but the percentage of Obama-released prisoners returning to terrorist activity is lower than Bush-released prisoners. Only 6 percent of Obama-released prisoners returned to terrorism vs. 21 percent of Bush-released prisoners, according to Director of National Intelligence data.
This is the second time in just a few days that the anxious Trump has taken aim at former President Obama with flubbed facts. Over the weekend he accused Obama of tapping his phones, even though there is no evidence of that. (Here's a USA Today article that fact checks that mistaken claim.)
