Donald Trump declared the terrorist organization known as ISIS dead in 2018.
The president pulled our troops out of Syria after making that declaration, and the snake slowly started to regrow its head.
Ironically, nearly seven years from the day of Trump’s assertion about the organization, he ordered a massive strike in Nigeria to hit ISIS targets.
In December 2018, Trump declared, "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has had an on-again-off-again relationship with Trump, said he was “blindsided” by that announcement, then issued a blistering critique of the president's move.
Graham, at the time, stated, "The biggest winners in this are ISIS and Iran,” adding that this was a disaster in the making.
After the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, ISIS has been attacking the new regime in charge, once again creating a rather large footprint in the Middle East, more specifically in Syria.
Not only has ISIS resurfaced, but it has changed its tactics to go well beyond what we had seen from the group in the past in terms of how it levied its attacks against targets.
In 2023, ISIS claimed responsibility for 121 attacks, a number that grew to 294 in 2024, and that tally is sure to grow again once we have the final totals for 2025.
The UN Monitoring Team recently concluded that ISIS “will continue to project an external threat . . . if divisions in the country allow a permissive space from where they can plan and execute attacks.”
Trump announced a strike against ISIS on Christmas night, posting, "Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!"
The president then came under attack on social media for conducting a strike on Christmas as well as for ordering a strike in Nigeria, but the critics' narrative was bogus, as the operation was conducted with the permission of the Nigerian government, with Nigeria having shared intelligence with the United States to ensure that the strike was successful.
After the strike and the subsequent pushback, the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, "Nigeria reiterates that all counter-terrorism efforts are guided by the primacy of protecting civilian lives, safeguarding national unity, and upholding the rights and dignity of all citizens, irrespective of faith or ethnicity."
The statement continued, "Terrorist violence in any form whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities remains an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.”
Christian charity Open Doors has confirmed the strike hit terrorist camps located in Jabo, which is a rural community area in the Sokota State. It also confirmed that multiple ISIS operators were killed in the strike. The strike was conducted because of the attacks against the Christian community, so now the only question is whether ISIS learned its lesson or if it will conduct a revenge attack to answer Trump’s strikes.
