Trump's story of his aborted raid on Iran is literally unbelievable.
Trump suggested Friday that no one in the U.S. military knew the number of possible casualties while planning to bomb Iran, and that he was the only one to raise the issue.
On Thursday night, Trump called off an attack on Iran while U.S. planes were in the air, minutes before they were scheduled to strike.
In Trump's fanciful retelling of the story in an interview with NBC, he claimed that he brought up his concerns at the very last minute — as U.S. military assets were about to attack.
"They came in about a half an hour before," Trump told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. "They said, 'Sir, we're about ready to go.'"
Trump says he asked how many people would be killed, and that no one knew the answer.
"Sir, I'd like to get back to you on that," was the response, according to Trump.
"They came back, said, 'Sir, approximately 150,'" Trump claimed. He concluded his tale by saying he did not think the casualties would be a "proportionate" response to shooting down an unmanned drone.
Trump's version of events is hard to believe.
It requires the entire world to accept that the U.S. military does not make casualty estimates before conducting a deadly attack on a foreign government and does not inform the commander in chief of those estimates while considering a strike.
It requires believing that Trump alone thought of the casualties just minutes before the raid was supposed to be underway, that then, armed with the new information no one had until he asked, Trump made his final decision.
And he wants to be praised for the choices he made.
Trump is a serial liar, who has made up stories about nearly every topic under the sun — his personal finances, his popularity, and his presidential policies.
Either his version of events — in which the American military bumbles about, unprepared before a military strike — is true, or he made it up.
Trump's track record shows that he's usually lying.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
