Trump: US has spent six trillion on the Middle East, somehow, somewhere, on something

President Donald Trump has made a bold claim. During a proposal to the United States Congress for a trillion dollar budget to rebuild US infrastructure, Trump said that the United States has spent six trillion dollars on the Middle East while neglecting America, according to The Times of Israel. Six trillion bucks—wowzer. When? Where? How? Not important. He gave no context for the statistic and left people wondering if he was actually referring to the 6.5 trillion in fudged funds revealed by a 2016 audit of the Pentagon’s defense spending.

President Trump seemed to think something about the whole thing just wasn’t fair:

Trump complained to airline executives that “we spent six trillion dollars in the Middle East, we got nothing.” https://t.co/qSscrwkOMB pic.twitter.com/tXJ3IkL1J5

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) February 9, 2017

Perhaps this is why he has consistently advocated to steal Iraq’s oil?

People on Twitter had a hard time believing the unsubstantiated figure, which had no supporting details to make it seem even a tiny bit accurate:

"With these six trillion dollars we could have rebuilt our country twice, or maybe even three times."

Who's his numbers guy? Like for real.

— Farhanah Faruque (@farhanahfaruque) March 1, 2017

This user had a good theory where the money went:

Six trillion dollars on the Middle East? Well, if you mean six trillion dollars bombing the Middle East, perhaps. #CPAC2017

— Kit Drake (@dragonfruitgirl) February 24, 2017

This claim is the newest of Trump's negative rhetoric on the region. Six out of the seven majority-Muslim countries initially banned under the US President’s travel restriction are in the Middle East. Perhaps we're being too hard on him, though. He does seem to be sending love to all the Muslims in this video, after all. 

LM

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