Trump once again implies terrorist group is 'smart' despite flood of criticism

Former President Donald Trump triggered outrage and controversy at a recent campaign event by characterizing Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militants designated as a terrorist group for their violent attacks on Israel, as "very smart."

This week, Maegan Vasquez flagged in The Washington Post that Trump is now doubling down on that — by sharing a column from MAGA superfan and former CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord, making the same argument.

"At the time, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung defended the former president’s comments, saying Trump 'was clearly pointing out how incompetent Biden and his administration were by telegraphing to the terrorists an area that is susceptible to an attack' and added that 'smart does not equal good,'" wrote Vasquez, noting that Lord made the same assertion in his column: "There is no connection whatsoever — zero — between the definition of ‘smart’ and the concepts of good, bad, or indifferent, much less any tie between ‘smart’ and ‘evil.’ What is particularly astonishing here with [these criticisms of Trump] is, as mentioned, the utter lack of knowledge about the truly evil figures in world history — and, specifically, that these people were hardly dumb.”

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

“Trump is no fool who is taken in by ignoring the reality of who these people really are,” Lord continued.

Lord, who first cut his teeth working in the Ronald Reagan administration, was a frequent defender of the former president on CNN during the early days of his administration, but was fired from the network after he tweeted a Nazi salute at Angelo Carusone, the president of the liberal journalism watchdog group Media Matters for America.

President Joe Biden has argued otherwise, telling reporters of Trump's remarks, "the right time to praise terrorists is never."