Trump makes new case for Soleimani hit
President Donald Trump delivered a dramatic account of the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, joked that he doesn’t care if construction projects kill all the rattlesnakes and noted his indifference to the budget during a private dinner with wealthy donors Friday night at Mar-a-Lago, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post.
Mr. Trump, his tone subdued and conversational, explained his motivation for attacking Soleimani and recounted listening to a military official count down to the Jan. 3 strike.
The president said nothing about an “imminent attack” on U.S. interests or threats to four U.S. embassies, as he previously has to justify the unilateral military strike that escalated tensions in the region and opened debate on presidential war powers.
Instead, he spoke broadly about Soleimani as “the father of the roadside bomb.” Mr. Trump said he heard about two weeks ago that the U.S. had Soleimani under surveillance and he was “talking about bad stuff.”
“He was saying bad things about our country, like, ‘We’re going to attack, we’re going to kill your people.’ I said, ‘Listen, how much of this [expletive] do we have to listen to, right?’” Mr. Trump said to applause from the crowd.
In a separate audio clip, Mr. Trump is heard boasting about increasing the defense budget by $2.5 trillion. To those who criticized his spending and the growing national debt, Mr. Trump said, “Who the hell cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country.”
For most of Barack Obama’s time in office, Republicans seemed to care very much about the budget, making fears around the national debt and deficit their top talking point. They’ve backed off those concerns under Mr. Trump.
Utah boy kills 4
A boy armed with a gun killed three children and a woman inside a Utah home, then accompanied a fifth victim to a hospital, where he was arrested, police said Saturday.
Police were still trying to piece together who’s who and what happened leading up to Friday night’s shooting in Grantsville. Investigators believe the victims are all related, and officials declined to release information about the shooter other than he is a juvenile male.
“We’re trying to make certain that we verify people’s relationships among the deceased and the survivor,” Grantsville police Cpl. Rhonda Fields said. “As for motive, we don’t have any of that.”
It appears to be the largest mass shooting in Utah since 2007, when a gunman killed five people and himself in Salt Lake City. It’s also the first homicide in nearly 20 years in Grantsville, a town of 11,000 about 35 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The boy faces 10 charges, the most serious being aggravated homicide, she said. Police won’t release his identity because he has been charged as a juvenile.
SpaceX test delayed
SpaceX will have to wait at least another day to destroy a rocket, a test that will prove to NASA that a mechanism meant to save astronauts’ lives by triggering if there is a problem works.
In an early-morning tweet Saturday, company officials said “sustained winds and rough seas in the recovery area” forced the company to stand down.
Representatives with the Air Force weather squadron said Friday that conditions in the recovery area posed a greater threat than the weather at the launch site.
A six-hour test window now opens at 8 a.m. Sunday.