4 years ago, Trump didn't know who Soleimani was. Now he says he should have been killed years ago

[muriel_volestrangler]

Via Charles Pierce

Three years ago, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, like 99.99 percent of his fellow citizens, did not have the faintest idea what the Quds Force was, and he wouldn’t have known who the hell Qasem Soleimani was if the man sat in his lap. In the aftermath of his astonishingly reckless decision to take Soleimani out on Thursday, a number of the president*’s previous public statements have been unearthed. Many of them were ancient warnings that Barack Obama intended to start a war with Iran in order to be re-elected in 2012. These are further proof enough of his bone-deep mendacity, but more compelling was a radio interview he did with Hugh Hewitt while running for president himself four years later.

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. The Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by…

No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Forces.

Later in the interview, the president* found time to whine. At Hugh Hewitt. For being too tough on him.

You know, those are like history questions. Do you know this one, do you know that one. I will tell you, I thought you used the word Kurd before. I will tell you that I think the Kurds are the most underutilized and are being totally mistreated by us. And nobody understands why.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30389099/iran-qasem-soleimani-assassinated-trump/

(It was Sept 2015, to be precise - it's on YouTube). Now Trump is tweeting "He should have been taken out many years ago". Trump hasn't the fuck of an idea about the Middle East situation; he just wants to be known as a killer. Because his base admire that sort of thing.

And, of course, note that Trump has now "totally mistreated" the Kurds, in favour of a killer strongman he admires - Erdogan.