On Tuesday, speaking to reporters at the White House, President Trump bluntly addressed those who were complaining abut the airstrike he ordered that killed arch-terrorist Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Trump said simply, “Soleimani has been called a monster. And he was a monster. And he’s no longer a monster. He’s dead.” Trump added, “He was traveling with the head of Hezbollah; they weren’t there to discuss a vacation; they weren’t there to go to a nice resort somewhere in Baghdad; they were there to discuss bad business, and we saved a lot of lives by terminating his life.”
Trump, who was accompanied by the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, continued by noting the Democratic presidential candidates who had criticized the action, saying, “And that’s a good thing for a lot of countries. And he was planning a very big attack and a very bad attack for us and other people. And we stopped him. And I don’t think anybody can complain about it. I don’t hear too many people other than politicians who are trying to win the presidency; those are the ones that are complaining but I don’t hear anybody else complaining.”
Trump noted of Soleimani, “We had an attack very recently that he was in charge of where we had people horribly wounded, one dead; in fact, the number now as of this morning is two dead. And that was his. He was traveling with the head of Hezbollah; they weren’t there to discuss a vacation; they weren’t there to go to a nice resort somewhere in Baghdad; they were there to discuss bad business, and we saved a lot of lives by terminating his life … They were planning something, and you’re going to be hearing about it, or at least various people in Congress are; you’re going to be hearing about it tomorrow …”
Trump continued, “We had tremendous information; we’ve been following him for a long time. We followed his path for those three days and they were not good stops.”
Trump added, “We did ourselves and we did a lot of countries a big favor. I’ve been hearing from countries; they were extremely happy with what we did. And if you look inside Iran itself, there were plenty of those leaders that were happy because they feared him and didn’t like him in many cases.”
Asked about targeting cultural sites, Trump answered, “As I said yesterday, it was very interesting; they’re allowed to kill our people; they’re allowed to maim our people; they’re allowed to blow up everything that we have and there’s nothing that stops them and we are, according to various laws, supposed to be very careful with their cultural heritage. … I like to obey the law, but think of it: they kill our people,; they blow up our people, and then we have to be very gentle with their cultural institutions. But I’m okay with it; it’s okay with me. But I will say this: if Iran does anything they shouldn’t be doing, they will be suffering the consequences and very strongly.”
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