President Donald Trump said he granted Iran permission to fire missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the U.S. Central Command’s regional headquarters.
Incredibly, not one Republican has expressed even the slightest hint of dismay over this horrifying revelation.
Trump’s admission came on Wednesday as he spoke at a NATO summit in the Netherlands.
“You saw that, where fourteen missiles were shot at us the other day. They were very nice. They gave us warning, they said, ‘We’re going to shoot them, is one o’clock okay?’ I said, ‘It’s fine’ and everybody was emptied off the base so they wouldn’t get hurt,” Trump said.
About 10,000 American troops are currently stationed at Al Udeid. It is the largest U.S. base in the Middle East.
Most of the personnel were evacuated ahead of the attack, while 44 soldiers stayed behind to operate the system that successfully intercepted the Iranian barrage. If anyone had been hurt, that would have happened after Trump apparently gave the go-ahead for an American military facility to be bombed.
“What would have happened if a Democratic president, particularly one named Joe Biden, had said he let a foreign adversary fire on an American military installation?” asked Josh Marshall, a longtime political commentator and the publisher of Talking Points Memo.
Trump has not received criticism or condemnation from his fellow Republicans for reportedly giving his blessing for the attack. Instead, GOP leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson have touted the administration’s unverified claims that the U.S. attack on Iran significantly degraded —or even “obliterated”—that nation’s nuclear program.
But the confirmation that the attack got a thumbs-up from Trump casts another shadow over the entire episode.
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have complained and whined that the media reported on a preliminary Pentagon assessment that said Iran’s nuclear facilities were degraded but not obliterated, as Trump has claimed.
Related | Hegseth is pissed you might read the news about Trump’s Iran bombings
Now Americans are learning that Trump welcomed a fusillade in response to an unprovoked American attack that appears to have missed its target.
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