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Donald Trump claimed on Friday that when he said President Obama was the founder of ISIS, he was being sarcastic. He tweeted:

Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) “the founder” of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 12 Aug 16

What Mr. Trump said at a rally on Wednesday was that the president “is the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS, O.K.! He’s the founder, he founded ISIS and I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”

This is not sarcasm, which the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines as “the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say especially in order to insult someone, to show irritation, or to be funny.” The Washington Post offered a helpful example on Friday, titling a story on Mr. Trump’s tweet, “Donald Trump has an airtight, sensible excuse for why he said President Obama ‘founded ISIS.’”

It’s possible that Mr. Trump does not know what sarcasm is. It’s possible that he does know, and that he only tweeted about the ISIS comments again to keep the issue alive and to further stir up controversy. It’s also possible that what he says has essentially no relationship to what he actually means.

About an hour after his sarcasm tweet, Mr. Trump tweeted:

I love watching these poor, pathetic people (pundits) on television working so hard and so seriously to try and figure me out. They can’t! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 12 Aug 16

He seems to be saying that he wants the media to misunderstand him, raising the possibility that he is simply uttering a stream of inflammatory gibberish in order to confuse journalists. Presumably, though, Mr. Trump wants his supporters to understand him.

And if he wants his supporters, but not others, to understand what he says, then the best way to learn what he really means is to listen to some of his supporters.

In July, David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, said, “I’m overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years.”

And Richard Spencer, the president of a white nationalist think tank, told the Associated Press, “Trust me. Trump thinks like me.” He also said that African-Americans, Latinos and Jews should be removed from the United States.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that everybody like me loves Trump and supports him?”

I do. That’s sarcasm.