In response to the attack in his hometown, President Donald Trump has called for Sayfullo Saipov to be given the death penalty | Win McNamee/Getty Images Trump: ISIS 'will pay a big price for every attack on us'

The Islamic State “will pay a big price for every attack on us,” President Donald Trump declared on Twitter Friday morning, a response to the militant group’s claim that the driver who killed eight people in New York City by running them over with a truck earlier this week is a “soldier of the caliphate.”

“ISIS just claimed the Degenerate Animal who killed, and so badly wounded, the wonderful people on the West Side, was ‘their soldier,’” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Based on that, the Military has hit ISIS ‘much harder’ over the last two days. They will pay a big price for every attack on us!”


In brief comments to reporters Friday before embarking on his 12-day trip to Asia, Trump said, "We are hitting them 10 times harder," when asked about ISIS.

Police on Wednesday said Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old Uzbekistan native alleged to have driven a rental truck down a crowded bike path in New York this week, carried out his attack following guidance published by the Islamic State. Saipov managed to kill eight people and injure more than 12 others before he was shot by a police officer and taken into custody. Inside the rental truck, investigators recovered a note written in Arabic pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

It was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York since terrorists rammed hijacked airplanes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Although the group provided no evidence to back its claim, CNN reported that the Islamic State claimed via its al-Naba newsletter that “One of the Islamic State soldiers in America attacked on Tuesday a number of crusaders on a street in New York City.”

In response to the attack in his hometown, Trump has called for Saipov to be given the death penalty and appeared initially to be weighing a move to transfer the alleged terrorist to the detention facility at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay and potentially routing his case through military courts. The president has since suggested that he believes the federal court system will deliver a faster result for Saipov’s case.

