Moments after Donald Trump told supporters at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Friday that he was “obviously being sarcastic” when he repeatedly called President Barack Obama “the founder of ISIS,” he seemed to backtrack on backtracking, by adding, “but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”

Video: Trump says he was being "sarcastic...but not that sarcastic" when calling Obama the "founder of ISIS" https://t.co/f4NxUZchdk — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) August 12, 2016

Video of the comments from NBC News showed that Trump then accused the media of intentionally distorting his words, pointing at the assembled press corps and telling the crowd, “These people are the lowest form of life.” As his supporters cheered, the candidate then executed another half pivot. “They are the lowest form of humanity!” Trump bellowed. “Not all of them, they have about 25 percent that are pretty good actually, but most of them.” The meandering, jokey way Trump speaks, riffing on subjects like a stand-up comic working out his material live on stage, makes the task of reporting his comments unusually challenging.

Trump's sarcastic delivery is so subtle that nobody notices he's doing it until he tells us. (Or, he's lying.) https://t.co/h4ekbiFGuw — Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) August 12, 2016

The candidate himself even lamented recently at an appearance in Virginia — where he assured the mother of a crying baby that she was welcome to stay before asking her to leave — that his own supporters sometimes think he is joking when he is serious. “I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking,” he told the crowd. “That’s OK, people don’t understand, that’s OK.”*

Trump: "I think she really believed I love having a baby crying while I'm speaking. People don't understand" pic.twitter.com/cxJQfeo54I — Nit (@Nitsuga000) August 3, 2016

Trump seems to have less sympathy for the members of the press forced to parse his improv act for a living, After insisting for days that he had not been speaking metaphorically about Obama and ISIS, Trump finally explained to an NBC affiliate in Florida on Thursday that he blamed Obama and Clinton for creating the conditions for ISIS to flourish by withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011. “Instead of keeping some troop presence there, he announced a date that he’s leaving and then, very importantly, he took everybody out, all of a sudden,” Trump told WTVJ. “They just sat back and waited, and when we left, basically, ISIS was formed.” As the Clinton campaign argued a year ago, when Jeb Bush used this same argument to blame the current administration for the chaos in Iraq, the Status of Forces Agreement under which the U.S. promised to withdraw all of its troops by the end of 2011 was in fact signed by President Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, on December 14, 2008 (during a visit to Baghdad better remembered for the nimble way Bush ducked when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at him). Bush’s attempt to blame Obama and Clinton for the rise of the militant group backfired, most notably when a 19-year-old college student told him, “Your brother created ISIS,” but that didn’t stop Trump from appropriating the line of attack for himself.



As Andrew Kaczynski reported for Buzzfeed News on Thursday, however, Trump is pursuing the argument that Obama and Clinton are to blame for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq despite the fact that he himself repeatedly called for an immediate withdrawal when Bush was president. On the eve of the 2008 presidential election, Trump told British GQ he supported John McCain, but “I wish he would promise to get us out of Iraq faster.” Speaking to Wolf Blitzer of CNN on March 16, 2007, Trump first said that he regretted the ouster of Saddam Hussein, praising the Iraqi dictator just as he would nine years later on the campaign trail. “Saddam Hussein, whether they like him or didn’t like him, he hated terrorists, he’d shoot and kill terrorists,” Trump said. “Now it’s a breeding ground for terrorists.”

Check out this @cnn exchange I had w/ @realDonaldTrump in 2007 on the Iraq War https://t.co/hTnPPR30qN — Wolf Blitzer (@wolfblitzer) August 12, 2016