President Donald Trump delivered a dramatic account of the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem 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 deep-pocketed donors Friday night at Mar-a-Lago, according to audio files obtained by The Washington Post.
Trump, his tone subdued and conversational, explained his motivation for attacking Soleimani and recounted listening to an anonymous military official countdown to the Jan. 3 strike.
The president spoke broadly about Soleimani as “the father of the road side bomb” responsible for “every young, beautiful man or woman who see walking around with no legs, no arms.” Trump said he heard about two weeks ago that the United States 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 […] do we have to listen to, right?'” Trump said to applause from the donor crowd.
Trump went on to describe those final minutes before the strike, watching and listening from the Situation Room.
” ‘Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds.’ No emotion. ‘two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They’re in the car, they’re in an armored vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. 30 seconds. 10, 9, 8 …’ Then all of a sudden, boom.”
The official on the line told the president Soleimani and the Iraqi military leader he was meeting with were “gone” and then hung up, according to Trump.
“I said, ‘Where is this guy?’ ” Trump said. “That was the last I heard from him.”
In a separate audio clip, Trump is heard boasting about increasing the defense budget by $2.5 trillion. To those who criticized his spending and the growing national debt, Trump said, “Who […] cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country.”
The audio files, obtained by The Post, came in four short segments, and each cuts off midsentence or midpoint.
In the 40-second clip about the military budget, Trump said, “It’s been an incredible period of time and that’s despite the witch hunt . . .” before the audio cuts out.
(c) 2020, The Washington Post · Colby Itkowitz, David A. Fahrenthold
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Washington post traitors i hate you … can’t you ever have anything positive to say about the president…