Don rips Dems on Qassem
President Trump blasted Democrats and the media on Monday for questioning his administration’s assertion that Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was planning “imminent” attacks on American targets when the US killed him.
“The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was ‘imminent’ or not, & was my team in agreement,” Trump tweeted.
“The answer to both is a strong YES., but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!”
The tweet came shortly after NBC News, citing five current and former unidentified senior administration officials, reported that Trump had authorized the killing of the Quds Force commander back in June.
The directive came with the condition that Trump would have final say on any operation to kill Soleimani, NBC said.
That decision was why eliminating Soleimani was one of the options that military brass presented to Trump two weeks ago as a possible retaliation for an Iranian-backed militia’s attack on a base in Iraq that left a US contractor dead and four American service members wounded, according to NBC.
John Bolton, then Trump’s national security adviser, had urged the president to authorizes Soleimani’s killing after Iran shot down a US drone in June, according to NBC.
But Trump rejected the idea, saying he would take that step only if Iran killed an American.