President Donald Trump concocted a blatant lie in a tweet Saturday morning, accusing Democrats of “defending the life of Qassem Soleimani” who he called “one of the worst terrorists in history.”
There is no evidence that any Democrats have made such a defense. After Trump ally Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) made a similar assertion earlier this week, he apologized soon thereafter.
Writing on Twitter, the president asked, “Where have the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats gone when they have spent the last 3 days defending the life of Qassem Soleimani,” adding, “He was also looking to do big future damage! ‘Dems are “unhinged.’”
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Earlier in the week, Nikki Haley, Trump’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed on Fox News that Democrats were “mourning” the loss of the Iranian general. When pressed on what she meant, she doubled down.
“Mourning comes in different forms,” Haley’s office said in a statement. “It doesn’t have to be literally crying over the casket like Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei. Leading Democrats are aggressively arguing that we would be better off if Qassem Suleimani was still alive today. That is effectively mourning his death.”
Democratic presidential candidates have been explicit about Soleimani’s legacy. “No Americans will mourn Qassem Soleimani’s passing,” Democratic presidential hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden said. “He deserved to be brought to justice.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also called the Iranian general “a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans” even as she questioned the strategic reasoning behind the timing of the strike that took him out.
The mistruth follows a barrage of other eyebrow-raising claims by the president. On Friday, he claimed that four embassies were under threat from Iran. But, as the Washington Post reported, “that was at odds with intelligence assessments from senior officials.”
The Trump administration has been under increasing pressure to supply concrete evidence about the “imminent threat” that led them to take out Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force.
