Trump: Democrats Would Have Leaked Terrorist Soleimani Strike Plans
President blasts Dems during packed our campaign rally in Ohio
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President Donald Trump blasted Democrats during a packed-out rally in Ohio Thursday, revealing to his supporters that he couldn't share his plans to strike Iranian terrorist Qassem Soleimani with Dems due to the risk they would leak the information.
President Trump was headlining his first major rally of the election year, and almost immediately, he slammed Democrats for criticizing his handling of the Iran situation.
The president defended his order to take out Iran's terror chief Gen. Soleimani after the military leader was said to have orchestrated an attack on the American Embassy in Iraq.
Trump also blasted House Democrats' nonbinding War Powers Resolution, which seeks to restrict the president's actions toward Iran and was passed earlier in the day in a rebuke to the Soleimani strike.
Trump went on to suggest that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), "Liddle' pencil-neck" House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), and other Democrats would have tipped off the media about the operation had they known about it.
"They're saying, 'You should get permission from Congress, you should come in and tell us what you want to do -- you should come in and tell us, so that we can call up the fake news that's back there, and we can leak it,'" Trump explained. "Lot of corruption back there."
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The president added that it would have been impractical to have alerted Congress, given the "split-second" nature of the decision to kill Soleimani.
Trump was speaking before a packed crowd in Toledo after apparently pulling back from the brink of war with Iran earlier this week.
He spoke just hours after officials announced that Iran likely shot down a civilian airliner carrying dozens of Canadians, apparently "by mistake."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested the U.S. might bear responsibility, and he declined to condemn Iran.
Is the new standard really that a president of the United States can’t defend against attacks on U.S. personnel by a terror regime because the regime might accidentally shoot down an airliner taking off from one of its own airports?
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) January 9, 2020
For the most part, the rally focused on the Iran strike and the response to it from the political left.
"The radical left Democrats have expressed outrage over the termination of this horrible terrorist," Trump said.
"Instead, they should be outraged by Soleimani's savage crimes and the fact that his countless victims were denied justice for so long."
President @RealDonaldTrump at #TrumpRally:
— Trump War Room --- Text FIGHT to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) January 10, 2020
"The radical left Democrats have expressed outrage over the termination of this horrible terrorist. Instead, they should be outraged by Soleimani's savage crimes and the fact that his countless victims were denied justice for so long." pic.twitter.com/XMalYL319e
Trump said he had acted swiftly after the earlier attack at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and essentially overruled a commander who said the military response would not arrive until the next day.
The situation, Trump said, easily could have become "another Benghazi" -- a reference to the deadly 2012 attack at the U.S. consulate in Libya.
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"I said, 'nope, get in the planes right now, have them there immediately!'" Trump said.
"And, they got there immediately. ... If you dare threaten our citizens, you do so at your own grave peril."
Democrat blames America for IRAN shooting down a commercial airliner with a RUSSIAN missile that killed 176 people
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) January 10, 2020
This is disgusting and wrong pic.twitter.com/aK3mTImkcV
Former President Obama, Trump added, had erred by giving billions to Iran as part of the mostly defunct Iran nuclear deal, including a massive cash payout loaded onto U.S. aircraft.
"By subsidizing Iran's maligned conduct, the last administration was leading the world down the path of war," Trump said.
"We are restoring our world to the path of peace, peace through strength."
The campaign event offered Trump an opportunity to spotlight before a friendly crowd his decision to order the deadly drone strike against Soleimani while keeping the U.S. -- at least for the moment -- out of a wider military conflict.
