>> The Trump administration is attempting
to justify its assassination of Iran's top
General, Qasem Soleimani.
And since Congress did not authorize the assassination,
they didn't have a vote on the assassination.
You will hear various members of Trump's administration
and Trump himself argued that they made this
decision because Soleimani was an imminent
threat to the United States and to our troops.
In fact, on Twitter, Trump said, quote, General
Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded
thousands of Americans over an extended period
of time, and was plotting to kill many more,
but got caught!
He was directly and indirectly responsible
for the death of millions of people, including
the recent large number of protesters killed
in Iran itself.
While Iran will never be able to properly
admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared
within the country.
They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders
will let the outside world believe.
He should have been taken out many years ago.
That's fascinating because a few years ago
back in 2015, Donald Trump was asked about
Soleimani specifically and he didn't seem
very afraid of him.
Take a look.
>> Are you familiar with General Soleimani?
>> Yes, go ahead.
Give me a little, go ahead, tell me.
>> He runs the Quds forces.
>> Yes, okay, right.
>> Do you expect.
>> And I think the Kurds, by the way, have
been horribly mistreated by us.
>> No not the Kurds, the Quds forces.
The Iranian and Revolutionary guards, Quds
forces.
>> Yeah.
>> The bad guys.
>> Right.
>> Do you expect his behavior to change as
a result-
>> I think you said Kurds, Kurds.
>> No, Quds, Quds.
>> I'm sorry, I thought you said Kurds.
>> Yeah.
>> Because I think the Kurds have been very
poorly treated by us here.
Go ahead.
>> Agreed.
>> So that is the man who just green lit the
assassination of Iran's top military general.
And while, it's true that he wasn't a great
person.
He wasn't a good guy.
This is going to lead to devastating ramifications
for American citizens abroad.
We know that.
And we're all waiting to see what Iran's reaction
is going to be.
If they engage the United States militarily,
this is not a good idea at all.
This is gonna lead to a lot of bad consequences
>> All right, we're gonna break that small
clip down.
That actually was a much larger interaction.
I'm gonna tell you about some of the rest
of it in a second.
But first, he's like, you know General Soleimani?
He's like, yes, tell me more.
Okay, so everybody knows he doesn't know him,
right?
And he says, well, he's the head of the Quds
Force.
He said, yeah, the Kurds.
And then he said I misheard you.
But, wait a minute, if you know General Soleimani,
why would you think that it was the Kurds?
Soleimani is head of the Quds Force in Iran.
So you didn't know Soleimani.
Just say you didn't know him, right?
No, he's gotta lie about everything, right?
And I misheard you.
Does anybody think he really misheard him?
No, of course, he has no idea what the difference
between the Quds Force and the Kurds are.
And then throughout the rest of that interaction
with Hugh Hewitt, who is a conservative, he
kept saying these are gotcha questions.
>> Yep.
>> He asked him, hey, do you know Nasrallah
who's the head of Hezbollah?
Doesn't know him.
Didn't know the head of Hamas, Hezbollah or
any of these groups, the leader of Al-Nusra.
No, he didn't know any of them.
He didn't know any of them.
These are are gotcha questions.
Well it turns out if you're president you
gotta know that.
You're not running for plumber in chief, you
are running for Commander in Chief.
And he went on to say, by the time I get into
office it'll all be different anyway.
No, they were all the same when you got into
office.
And he said, doesn't matter I'll know it so
well it'll make your head spin.
Does it look like he knows it so well it'll
make our heads spin?
No, he has no idea who these people are, he
doesn't know.
It makes a difference if your president is
an idiot and is totally indifferent to reality
and facts.
>> Because it means that he's not educated
on a serious decision that he made, right?
But more importantly, he hasn't sat down to
think through what the consequences will be,
what the aftermath will be, right?
So it's not enough to just say we did this
because it was a bad person.
It's just not enough to say that.
Because there are bad people all throughout
the world many of whom we actually work with.
>> Yeah, Vladimir Putin's a bad guy.
Should we assassinate him?
Is that a good idea?
Should we assassinate his top general, maybe
start a nuclear war.
And then afterwards though, we can say, he
was a bad guy.
He was a bad guy.
He's a bad guy, okay?
It's easy to say.
No, we shouldn't do that.
That's a really stupid idea.
>> And one of the sad things is, I mean, we
can listen to that and as soon as he said
yes, every rational person says he never heard
of that person in his entire life.
But then a couple years go by, he becomes
president.
He's been surrounded top military brass this
entire time.
If he wanted to, if he was 1% interested,
he could have found out anything he needs
to know.
But we reached this point where lots of people
including some elected Democrats today were
like I just have to hope that he has a plan.
>> No.
>> Who thinks that he has a plan?
What Republican thinks that he has a plan
going forward.
And they don't care because they're not gonna
go, none of them are gonna be there.
The vast majority don't know anyone who's
serving.
It is just reality TV.
It's an interesting new season to a show they
love.
>> I'll give you an example of what a Donald
Trump plan looks like.
Six months ago, he called for an air strike
against Iran.
And then right as that air strike was about
to happen he called it off.
That's Donald Trump's planning.
Now, I'm happy he had called it off, it would
have been a complete and utter disaster if
that air strike had gone through.
But my point is it's not like Donald Trump
is some deep thinker who's sitting down and
again, thinking about the consequences of
his actions.
How is this assassination going to lead to
more harm to both civilians abroad and to
US citizens abroad?
And that includes troops, but also diplomats
who happen to be working abroad.
