President Donald Trump made the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani a theme of his re-election campaign on Thursday, drawing cheers from thousands at a rally when he said the death saved lives and delivered “American justice.”
At the campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, Trump spent a lengthy part of his stump speech defending his order to kill Soleimani and rejecting criticism from Democrats who say he overstepped his authority with the US military’s drone strike against the commander of Iran’s military Quds force at Baghdad’s airport a week ago.
He accused Soleimani of organizing violent protests by Iran-backed groups at the US Embassy in Baghdad earlier this month. Trump, who frequently trumpets his support of the US military, said if he had not sent US troops to protect the embassy the demonstrators might have broken in and killed Americans or taken them hostage, a repeat of the 2011 storming of a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, in which the US ambassador was killed.
REUTERS
For more details, watch the full report in the video above