From [1] (bolding added):

President Trump referred to [the perpetrator of the NYC bikepath attack] as "an animal" this morning as he took questions from reporters before departing for Hawaii and a 13-day, five-nation tour of Asia.

"When we have an animal do an attack like he did the other day on the west side of Manhattan, we are hitting them 10 times harder," Trump said. "They claimed him as a soldier - Good luck. Every time they hit us [and] we know it's ISIS, we hit them like you folks won't believe."

It’s unclear what military action, if any, Trump has authorized specifically in response to the New York City attack.

A spokesman for the Pentagon would only say that the U.S. military continues to strike ISIS "hard and often."

“We have, and we will continue to strike ISIS hard and often, along with Al-Qaeda and other affiliated or like-minded violent extremist organizations wherever they are globally. We are fighting and killing ISIS in operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Philippines, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, the Sinai in Egypt and wherever these groups emerge," Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway told ABC News.

If you're a Trump supporter, you think it must be true that we are in fact hitting ISIS "10 times harder" or at least a few times harder. If you won't believe that, then what else Trump says don't you believe?

There are a few problems:

1. If we're hitting ISIS 10 times (or 3 times, or 2 times) harder then before, that means that for all the months that Trump's been in office, we haven't been hitting ISIS as hard as we should have been. If we're hitting them twice as hard now, that means that all during February to October of this year at least - all the time Trump has been Commander in Chief - we were only hitting them 50% as hard. If Trump's telling the truth, then he's been going relatively easy on ISIS for most of this year.

2. Trump earlier sent the message to ISIS that terrorism works. Now, he's sending them another hopeful message: if they don't attack the U.S., we'll go easy on them. They can build up their forces in other countries and as long as they strike those other countries, we won't ramp up our attacks on them. That's going to confuse Trump's base, so let me repeat what he said: "Every time they hit us [and] we know it's ISIS, we hit them like you folks won't believe". Note the conditional: if ISIS attacks us, then we attack them "like you folks won't believe".

3. However, there is some good news for MAGA. It doesn't appear that Trump was admitting that he was going relatively easy on ISIS, because he was lying about increasing our attacks on them. The U.S. military's Operation Inherent Resolve is "the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria" and they release their strike reports. From [2]:

According to Operation Inherent Resolve’s daily strike reports, the coalition carried out “11 strikes consisting of 11 engagements against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq” on Nov. 1 and “13 strikes consisting of 15 engagements” on Nov. 2. Most notably, six strikes were launched, destroying a bomb factory and an ISIS headquarters near Deir Ezzor, ISIS’s last remaining stronghold in Syria. (Don’t be misled by the word headquarters. The coalition uses the word to describe a wide variety of facilities, and they get hit pretty regularly.)

That number of strikes is nothing unusual, judging by the compilation of these reports published by the monitoring group Airwars. Oct. 31 saw 13 strikes and 18 engagements. Oct. 25 saw 15 strikes with 25 engagements. In general, Airwars data shows that the number of strikes was way down in October, which makes sense given the fall of Raqqa earlier this month. There’s less ISIS to bomb.

The November 3 report says: "Coalition military forces conducted six strikes consisting of 15 engagements against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq". That number of strikes is 5 fewer than November 1 and 7 fewer than November 2. Those reports list "all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing, or remotely piloted aircraft, rocket propelled artillery and ground-based tactical artillery" [3].

I invite Trump supporters to explain what's going on. Is Trump admitting he was going easy on ISIS, is he just lying as usual, or is there some other fantastical explanation? Tweet @24AheadDotCom_ with your thoughts.

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[1] abcnews · go · com/Politics/trump-military-hitting-isis-10-times-harder-nyc/story?id=50907689
[2] slate · com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/11/03/trump_says_we_ve_hit_isis_much_harder_over_the_last_two_days_there_s_no.html
[3] inherentresolve · mil/Portals/14/11Nov2017/20171104-01%20CJTF-OIR%20Strike%20Release%20.pdf?ver=2017-11-04-034256-963