Rule of thumb: If a Trump story involves a man crying, the man likely did not cry. He has repeatedly invented male tears — to make opponents sound “weak,” to make supporters sound fawning.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 29, 2019
(He told Christian Broadcasting in 2016: “The last time I cried was when I was a baby.“) https://t.co/E8GYVnEj2y
Announcing Baghdadi’s death, Trump claimed that the ISIS leader was “whimpering” and likened him to a “dog” in his attempt to escape U.S. forces. Five senior Trump administration officials who watched in real time as the president spoke on Sunday morning each told The Daily Beast that they had no idea where the president got the “whimpering and crying and screaming” detail. Two officials recounted how after they heard that on Sunday, they immediately began messaging each other questions and comments like “uh where is he getting that?”
The comments confused officials in the Pentagon as well, some of who told The Daily Beast that there was no way Trump could have heard Baghdadi’s voice on the Situation Room livestream Saturday night because it did not have audio. Two senior officials said while President Trump could have spoken to commandos on the ground who carried out the raid, they said that has not often been the case in past operations.
And on Monday, questions about where the president got his information continued to make their way to administration officials. At a press briefing Monday afternoon, reporters peppered Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley with questions about Trump’s remarks about Baghdadi “whimpering” and “crying.” Asked whether he too had heard the whimpering and crying from Baghdadi, Esper said: “I don’t have those details.” Milley said the president had planned to talk to unit members involved in the raid, but that he didn’t know the source of the Baghdadi description Trump used.
Baghdadi had commanded forces from hideouts in both Syria and Iraq and was responsible for the killing of thousands of individuals in those countries. He also inspired the kidnapping and killing of American aid workers and journalists as well as spectacular attacks overseas. His death was celebrated as a major breakthrough in a years-long effort to limit ISIS’ reach and operational capacity; and, as such, questions over the validity of Trump’s account of the raid mounted were dismissed by his supporters and Republican operatives as the gripings of a press corps determined to find superficial ways to ding him.
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Trump has made similar overstatements before. Two people close to the president say that when they heard about his comments on the “crying” late ISIS leader, it reminded them of how Trump privately, as well as publicly, enjoys reflexively insulting his enemies in situations much less weighty than an anti-Islamic State raid. “Whether they’re actually crying or not, [Trump] will very often accuse some person he’s in a fight with, like a celebrity or a politician, of being weak and just crying all over the place,” one of the sources said. “It’s a favorite insult of his.”