Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of fomenting ISIS's rise by pulling US troops out of Iraq, a deal that was struck before she became Secretary of State.
"Well, President Obama and Secretary Clinton, created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq," Trump said during the debate. "Because they got out what — they shouldn't have been in — once I they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed."
"They wouldn't have even been formed if they left some troops behind like 10,000 or maybe something more than that," Trump claimed. "Then then you wouldn't have had them."
As Clinton soon pointed out, the agreement to withdraw US troops from Iraq was negotiated under the Bush administration. Attempts to renegotiate that agreement collapsed over Iraq refusing to provide immunity from prosecution to the soldiers who remained behind. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was formed right after the US invasion and would later become ISIS, was pushed into Syria at the time, where it would reform and regrow, taking advantage of the civil war that begun there in 2011. The last US soldiers left Iraq at the end of 2011 — ISIS began its push into Iraq in 2013, years later.
Trump continued to push on this thread, though, after being corrected. "She could have defeated it by never having it get going to begin with," Trump said, towards the end of the debate.