"Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd believes that President Barack Obama prefers to call the Islamic State terror group ISIL instead of ISIS because he doesn't want to deal with Syria.
During his interview with the president on the NBC show Sunday, Todd consistently referred to the jihad extremists as ISIS, an acronym for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, while Obama called the group ISIL, as in the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
The ISIS moniker has been adopted by most media outlets in most cases, including Newsmax. But Todd believes he knows the reason that the president is sticking to ISIL,
Mediaite reported.
"Obviously, we refer to it at NBC News as ISIS," said Todd about the confusion surrounding the various names. "The Obama administration, the president says the word ISIL. The last 'S' stands for Syria. The last 'L,' they don't want to have stand for Syria."
The Levant is a far greater area of the Middle East than just Syria, and incorporates a region stretching from southern Turkey to Egypt, including Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Jordan. The terror organization plans to create an Islamic State, or caliphate, in this area, according to reports.
But because the Obama administration has been more willing to attack ISIS in Iraq than in Syria, Todd believes that the president has decided it suits the administration's interest more to leave the "S" out of the name, Mediaite says.
His explanation differs from Fox News host Harris Faulkner, who said on "Outnumbered" that Obama is "tipping his hat" to ISIS by calling them ISIL.
"Levant is a bigger territory," she said. "That's why they want to embrace that name and it includes many, many more countries than just Syria."
The terror group fueled the problem of what it should be called in June when it officially changed its names to Islamic State or "IS," which indicates its ambitions in the Middle East are not just limited to Iraq, Syria, and the Levant.
In general, the media has ignored "IS" as an acronym, possibly because in a headline it could be confused with the word "is."
Meanwhile, on "Fox & Friends," Donald Trump mysteriously pointed out that "there's a reason" why the president refers to the terror group as ISIL, although he declined to reveal what it is.
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