- The Washington Times - Friday, November 3, 2017

President Trump said Friday that the U.S. military is hitting the Islamic State “10 times harder” since an extremist pledging allegiance to the terrorist group killed eight people in New York this week.

“Every time we’re attacked from this point forward, and it took place yesterday, we are hitting them 10 times harder,” the president told reporters at the White House. “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. They claimed him as a soldier — good luck.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what military action the president was referring to that took place Thursday.

He added, “Every time they hit us, we know it’s ISIS, we hit them like you folks won’t believe.”

The president also suggested in a tweet Friday that he was carrying out military retribution against the Islamic State, which claimed credit for the attack by Uzbekistan native Sayfullo Saipov.

“ISIS just claimed the Degenerate Animal who killed, and so badly wounded, the wonderful people on the West Side, was ’their soldier,’ ” he said. “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!”

The Syrian army said Friday it had liberated the city of Deir el-Zour from the Islamic State, but Syria is not allied with the U.S. military in the fight against extremists in that country.

• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.

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