President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning falsely accused Barack Obama’s administration of releasing “122 vicious prisoners” from the Guantanamo Bay military prison.
“122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” Trump tweeted.
The timing of Trump’s tweet suggested it was inspired by a “Fox & Friends” segment Tuesday morning reporting on a US airstrike in Yemen that killed former Guantanamo detainee Yasir al Silmi.
The president, however, appeared to have drawn the wrong conclusion from the Fox segment.
The Fox segment called the airstrike a “win in the war on terror” and credited the Trump administration with killing al Silmi, who the show said was “released by Barack Obama.”
But while the segment ended by saying "122 prisoners released from Gitmo have returned to the battlefield," it had specifically named only al Silmi as being released under Obama.
As NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander pointed out on Twitter, a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicates that 113 of the 122 former Guantanamo detainees cited by Trump were released under President George W. Bush, compared with only nine under Obama.
Watch the "Fox & Friends" segment below:
Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism pic.twitter.com/y9jb420fFZ
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 7, 2017