--- title: Donald Trump Is Making Terror Attacks Likelier. Here's How description: Counterterrorism experts warn that Trump's them-against-us approach both encourages extremists and makes it harder to detect their plots canonical: https://time.com/4611452/donald-trump-isis-berlin-islam-extremist-terrorism/ author: Karl Vick article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-22T11:00:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:20.438Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Donald Trump Is Making Terror Attacks Likelier. Here's How og:description: Counterterrorism experts warn that Trump's them-against-us approach both encourages extremists and makes it harder to detect their plots og:url: https://time.com/4611452/donald-trump-isis-berlin-islam-extremist-terrorism/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbceae6cd9ab400f/6988b3c2a988cae6696ba81a/trump-plane.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5568 og:image:height: 3132 og:image:alt: President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida where he is taking meetings on Dec. 21, 2016. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Donald Trump Is Making Terror Attacks Likelier. Here's How twitter:description: Counterterrorism experts warn that Trump's them-against-us approach both encourages extremists and makes it harder to detect their plots twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbceae6cd9ab400f/6988b3c2a988cae6696ba81a/trump-plane.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Yes, Donald Trump Is Making Terrorist Attacks More Likely. Here's How > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Survivors of Terrorist Attacks on How They Moved Forward [Watch (HLS stream): Survivors of Terrorist Attacks on How They Moved Forward](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z0gQrqpv.m3u8) (7:17)  _Published 2016-09-09. Four terrorist attack survivors recounted the horrors of such acts of violence in a series of emotional interviews. The survivors who spoke to TIME all agreed on the need to march on in the face of fear._  by [Karl Vick](https://time.com/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Editor at Large Dec 22, 2016 11:00 AM UTC  President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., where he is taking meetings on Dec. 21, 2016 President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., where he is taking meetings on Dec. 21, 2016 Jim Watson—AFP/Getty Images  by [Karl Vick](https://time.com/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Editor at Large Dec 22, 2016 11:00 AM UTC ISIS may be losing ground in Iraq and Syria, but things are very much moving its way on the next battleground: the realm of terrorist attacks like the truck rampage in Berlin. The group thrives on the kind of clash-of-civilizations rhetoric frequently invoked by populist politicians across the West — especially President-elect Donald Trump, who as a candidate [famously declared](http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/09/politics/donald-trump-islam-hates-us/), “I think Islam hates us.” Counterterrorism experts warn that Trump’s them-against-us approach both encourages extremists and makes it harder to detect their plots, by discouraging cooperation from moderate Muslims. The likely result is a dangerously escalating cycle of attacks and reactions that fuel more attacks. “There’s a pretty perfect storm brewing, insofar as the rise of populist nationalism in Europe and in the United states plays perfectly into the terrorists’ narrative,” Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism chief at the State Department who is now at Dartmouth, tells TIME. “As we know, ISIS was using Donald Trump in its propaganda to try to enhance its recruitment. It’s now in a much better position to make the case that the West really is determined to destroy Islam and it’s an unalterable enemy, as it has been characterized since bin Laden.” Many counterterrorism veterans have [expressed alarm](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-appointees-islam-radicalism-231647) at Trump’s sweeping condemnation of the Muslim faith, which wipes away crucial nuances painstakingly maintained since President George W. Bush, who after the 9/11 attacks made a point of targeting only violent extremists. “Islam is peace,” he declared in a visit to a Washington mosque just six days after the attacks; the White House used the quote as the [headline](https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html) on its press release about the visit. By contrast, Trump drove home his Manichean approach to Islamist terrorism by naming as his National Security Adviser a former general [who tweeted](https://twitter.com/genflynn/status/703387702998278144): “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” Retired Lieut. General Michael Flynn, who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency for three years, also gave a speech declaring “Islam is a political ideology” that “definitely hides behind this notion of it being a religion.” Some Trump supporters publicly frame the battle against Muslim terrorists [through the prism of the Crusades](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/16/isis-wants-to-fight-a-holy-war-so-do-some-trump-supporters/?utm%5Fterm=.f37212411844). The terrorists do, too. ISIS speaks openly about its desire to push apart Muslims and non-Muslims, [calling in its magazine Dabiq for](http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-state-dabiq-magazine-issue-7-from-hypocrisy-to-apostasy.pdf) the “the extinction of the gray zone” where people of different faiths exist in trust and peace. A clash of civilizations is exactly the fight they want. The group [was flummoxed](http://time.com/4277507/losing-in-battle-isis-gains-by-attacking-the-gray-zone-of-the-west/) by the mass exodus of Syrians to Europe last summer, and [stymied](https://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/7/former%5Fisis%5Fhostage%5Fnicolas%5Fhenin%5Fwelcoming) by the warm welcome they initially received in Germany. But the subsequent political backlash against the refugees has given ISIS heart, even as it loses the self-declared “caliphate” intended as a beacon and future homeland for the devout. The group did not actually expect Americans “to dig their own graves” by electing Trump, a top ISIS commander [ told Reuters](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-jihadists-idUSKBN1390FO) after the election. But the extremists declared themselves delighted by the outcome. “This guy is a complete maniac,” said Abu Omar Khorasani, the group’s top commander in Afghanistan. “His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands.” A great deal of damage has already been done. Trump’s statements during the campaign will stand forever online, feeding both the feelings of aggrievement that drive extremism and also tolerance by moderate Muslims of terrorist acts against the West. “We will see violence by people who aren’t specifically recruited by ISIS but who just feel events are too horrible to go unanswered,” says Benjamin. “We’ve seen a growing number of people in the last few years who seem to have not to have known what they are doing but have just snapped.” There was, however, a glimmer of hope that Trump may be educable on the basics of counterterrorism. His initial reaction to the Dec. 19 Berlin attack — in which 12 people were killed at an open-air Christmas market by a heavy truck — played into the extremists’ hands by framing the attack in explicitly religious terms. “ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad,” he said in a statement released on Monday. But on Wednesday, when asked about the language, Trump [walked it back](http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/trump-calls-berlin-rampage-an-attack-on-humanity/), first professing ignorance of the statement (“Who said that?”) then reframing the issue in broader terms: “It’s an attack on humanity,” Trump said, and then repeated the phrase a second time. Standing behind him, Flynn nodded gravely. ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ MUSIC ] You have to convey the truth, but there's always a viewpoint. So is the story you are telling, terror, terror, terror, it's awful, it's awful everybody's afraid, everybody run for your lives. Or is the message, how can we as a people come together to make our world safer? [ MUSIC ] This story There's a lot pieces to it. As of yet unconfirmed that a plane has hit the World Trade Center. And you can see that [ CROSSTALK ] It's got tons of smoke billowing out of the south tower. Unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers. Around 8: 40 and I ended up going down into the lobby. I know as soon as I got out of the elevator and started towards the door on the west side of the north tower when you heard a thud. I walked outside through the revolving door and I looked up above me and I see smoke billowing out at the top. The North tower. I turned around and thought I had no place to go. I couldn't outrun the debris that was coming down at me so I felt that the safest place for me to go would be to go back into the building, into the lobby. But I got as far as in the revolving door where all the oxygen, the temperature went up inside the door to like, an oven. Next thing I know I was lying out- In the middle of the driveway that leads up to that overpass, and I had been blown out of the building. [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hundreds dead, the number could rise. Among the dead, six- [ CROSSTALK ] The Taj Mahal Hotel has played a big role in my life since I was a little girl. My parents got married at the Taj, I got married at the Taj and it has a you know, great personal significance to me. What we really heard was a very loud crash, I thought I tree had fallen and you could see the host just kind of, you know... Looking through the window. A minute later she said that nobody move, somebody's dead in the corridor. I've never heard a gun being fired and we then realized they were gunshots. Many, many gunshots. The staff knew all the back passageways and the terrorists didn't and they used that tactical advantage. To save us, to save their guests rather than to save themselves. Hundreds of us should have died, I mean we shouldn't be here. A peace rally has turned deadly in the Turkish capital Ankara after [ INAUDIBLE ]. This dangerously divided country is even more divided now. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ NOISE ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] Post traumatic stress is very strange. It makes a situation be right below the surface. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] The sounds of the second plane striking the building and the noise it made when it struck the building, it must have been a real whining High pitched sound that right to this day goes through me like a knife. [ MUSIC ] It's very traumatic, when somebody has died, and you have lived. And that survivor's guilt is real, and it's universal. It's something to process, but then it's something that will either make you, or break you. [ MUSIC ] It remains to me, as amazing of a place as it Always was. I really felt protected there. I felt that people saved me there. And not only the people having [ UNKNOWN ] to say, but the spirit of that place, those walls. It saved me, it saved my husband, it saved so many of us. [ FOREIGN ] [ foreign 00: 06 ] I remember the first time I came into the city, it was very difficult for me, I mean I, walking down the narrow streets, around Times Square and stuff like that and I spent most of my time looking up between the buildings. [ foreign ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] In every place in the world we've had all these attacks lately. And they've happened under the name of Islam or jihad or whatever it is. But you know what? Terrorists are not people with religion. Terrorism is too powerful of a It to ever go away. The challenge for people is to understand that fear of that tactic and not allow themselves to be swayed. What are ways to combat these things that are happening? [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] What I have felt from my own personal experience with that, being a New Yorker and having lived through 9 / 11, is Said under extraordinary times ordinary people become extraordinary. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4611452/donald-trump-isis-berlin-islam-extremist-terrorism/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4611452/donald-trump-isis-berlin-islam-extremist-terrorism/"},"headline":"Yes, Donald Trump Is Making Terrorist Attacks More Likely. 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