US may release Baghdadi raid video

After Trump announced IS chief’s death, his campaign says president is ‘keeping America safe’

WASHINGTON:US President Donald Trump said on Monday he may order the release of parts of the video of the raid that resulted in the killing of Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, which his 2020 re-election campaign is touting as a personal achievement, telling supporters the president is “keeping America safe”.

Trump spoke about the killing at a Chicago event, saying Baghdadi is “dead as a doornail”, and attacked his predecessor Barack Obama, on whose watch the IS grew into a so-called caliphate with areas captured from Iraq and Syria: “He should have been killed years ago, another president should have gotten him.”

It wasn’t clear how much of the video would be released of the two-hour raid by the elite Delta Force operatives.

Trump, who watched the operation live in the situation room of the White House, said it was like “watching a movie”.

He had refused to say how the video was shot, but news reports have suggested it was recorded from an overhead drone, and that it may not bear out the details discussed by Trump, who repeated some of it at Chicago, including that Baghdadi “didn’t die bravely”.

Asked if he would consider releasing the video of the raid, he said, “We’re thinking about it. We may … And we may take certain parts of it and release it, yes.”

As more details will emerge of the raid, Trump, currently mired in an impeachment inquiry, would expect a bump in approval ratings, from the current low of 41% in the Realclearpolitics average of polls, as did President Barack Obama after the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

But the question he might also be asking himself is whether it will be just as short-lived.

Obama’s seven-point bump was gone in two months, and he was back at pre-bin Laden ratings.

Will Trump’s last, and until November of 2020?

Just hours after the announcement, Trump was loudly booed when he was introduced during a baseball championship game at a stadium in Democratic-leaning Washington DC, with a section of the crowd also breaking into a chant of “Lock him up”.

Nothing will stop him and his allies, from trying though. Trump started right away after the announcement with a 40-minute long news briefing, in which he portrayed the killing as the result of his unwavering focus on the hunt for al-baghdadi from the day he took office.