WASHINGTON DC – US President Donald Trump denied Wednesday having discussedwanting to kill Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, a key claim in a newbook by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward.
“That was never even contemplated,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Officeas he met with the emir of Kuwait.
Trump’s comments came as he warned Damascus that “the world is watching”Syrian troops massing on the edges of the rebel-held province of Idlib,raising fears of a humanitarian disaster.
“I just tell you that they will hopefully be very, very judicious andcareful,” Trump said of the Syrian regime.
“Because the world is watching. That cannot be a slaughter. If it’s aslaughter, the world is going to be very, very angry. And the United Statesis going to be very angry, too.”
In his new book “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Woodward recounts thatthe president told Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that he wanted to haveAssad killed after he carried out a chemical attack on civilians in April2017.
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“Let’s kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill a lot of them,” Woodward quotesTrump as saying.
He writes that Mattis told the president he would “get right on it” butthen came back later with plans for a more limited air strike.Trump and White House aides have assailed the book as a full of “made up”stories, and in a tweet on Wednesday morning the president wondered whyCongress doesn’t change the laws on libel.
“The book means nothing. It’s a work of fiction,” Trump told reporters inthe Oval Office, noting that Mattis and White House chief of staff JohnKelly had both issued statements rejecting the book’s account. – APP/AFP
