The shrinking caliphate--How much real estate ISIS lost after Trump took office

Washington Examiner:

The defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria rapidly accelerated during President Trump’s first year in office, beginning with the fall of East Mosul on Jan. 25, and continuing with a cascading series of defeats for the brutal terrorist group over the next 11 months.

The campaign liberated twice as many people and twice as much territory as in the previous 28 months under President Barack Obama, according to Defense Department figures.

On Jan. 20 — the day Trump was inaugurated — an estimated 35,000 ISIS fighters held approximately 17,500 square miles of territory in both Iraq and Syria.

As of Dec. 21, the U.S. military estimates the remaining 1,000 or so fighters occupy roughly 1,900 squares miles of mostly barren desert primarily in Syria, where few people live, and where they will be forced to surrender or die.

Between September 2014 when the counter-ISIS campaign began, and January 2017, U.S.-backed forces in Iraq and Syria liberated 13,200 square miles of territory and 2.4 million people from Islamic State rule.

In the 11 months since Trump took office, an additional 26,800 square miles have been reclaimed and 5.3 million people have been liberated.
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The big difference is that Trump turned the operations over to the experts in teh military rather than having amateurs in teh White House second guessing things they knew nothing about.  It made an immediate difference in the pace of destroying the Islamic religious bigots of ISIS.