Trump admits he was 'all set' to assassinate Assad after calling reports of the plan 'fiction'

(Image credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

last updated 17 September 2020

In Bob Woodward's previous book, Fear, the journalist describes a scene from 2017 in which President Trump pushed then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis to "kill" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after he launched a chemical attack on civilians. Mattis, Woodward reported, opted for a more measured approach in the end.

Trump responded at the time that assassinating Assad "was never even contemplated, nor would it be contemplated," while generally describing the book as "fiction."

On Tuesday, Trump hopped on the phone with the Fox & Friends team for 47-minute chat and admitted he was indeed "all set" to assassinate Assad and "would have rather taken him out," but "Mattis didn't want to do it." The president then went on a tangent about Mattis, whom he often openly criticizes, before eventually telling host Brian Kilmeade that he doesn't regret not going through with the plan. "I could have lived either way with that," he said. Tim O'Donnell

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.