>> Trump's National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, is defending so called intel indicating
that Qasem Soleimani was serving as an imminent threat to the United States, which essentially
makes an excuse for Donald Trump's order of an assassination on Soleimani.
Now, I wanna be clear that the intelligence agencies have not provided any intel at least
publicly, and the Trump administration has not provided any specifics publicly, however,
they're still pushing this narrative about how they have the intel, and how they're gonna
share the details of that Intel.
With Congress tomorrow on Wednesday, almost a week after this assassination took place.
I would argue that if they had that intel to begin with, they would show it immediately
to members of Congress to justify what is now in my opinion, a war crime.
But we'll get to that in a minute.
First, let's go to Donald Trump arguing that he knew all about Soleimani's actions, when
in reality he didn't even know who Soleimani was.
Take a look.
>> What would you tell us about what you knew prior?
>> Well, number one I knew the past.
His past was horrible.
He was a terrorist.
He was so designated by President Obama, as you know.
And he wasn't even supposed to be outside of his own country.
He was, so right there.
But that's in a way the least of it.
We had an attack very recently, that he was in charge of where we had people horribly
wounded, one dead.
In fact, the number now as of this morning, I believe is two dead, and that was his.
He was traveling with the head of Hezbollah.
They weren't there to discuss a vacation.
They were there to go to a nice resort, someplace in Baghdad.
They were there to discuss bad business, and we saved a lot of lives by terminating his
life.
A lot of lives were saved, they were planning something, and you're going to be hearing
about it, or at least various people in Congress are gonna be hearing about it tomorrow.
Our Secretary of State covered it very well a little while ago.
I saw him, I saw his news conference, Mike.
And if you wanna mention a couple of things in addition to what I've just said, but we
had tremendous information, we've been following him for a long time.
And we followed his path for those three days, and they were not good steps.
We didn't like where he was stopping, they were not good steps.
We saved a lot of lives.
>> Okay, so we have an imbecile for a president, and you know this but so.
>> He said nothing there, just to be clear.
No Anna, he clarified by saying he was up to bad business by going to not good stops,
third graders president and again, it's insulting third graders.
So, last week we showed you clips of Donald Trump being asked during the election season,
who Qasem Soleimani was and he said.
Sure, I know who he is and.
>> Yes.
>> And then they mentioned the Kurdish force and he's like, the Kurdish are good guys.
And he was like no, the Kurdish force from Iran.
He's like, it's a gotcha question.
It's not fair.
But, I thought you said you knew who he was.
So now here he is, couple years later he's claiming he knows Solemani, really really
well.
That's why he did this.
And what do you know about him?
He's making not good stops.
>> Yeah that means nothing.
>> We're gonna give you nothing.
That means absolutely nothing, of course except that he wanted to show that he was a tough
guy.
By killing an Iranian general.
So, we're gonna get through a quote, that will definitively tell you that they knew
nothing in a second, okay?
>> Yeah.
>> But, I wanna make sure in one of the thing that he talked about there.
He said he's a terrorist.
That is a blanket statement that we make of everyone, and that's our enemy, and so it
justifies all of our actions, and all assassinations, and all war crimes because we arbitrarily
call them terrorists.
Now, did Solemani's actions lead to other people's deaths?
Yes.
Is he also the top General of Iran?
Yes.
So, do the actions of some of our generals lead to deaths?
Yes.
Okay.
Are they terrorists?
No, so now even if you say, well yeah but I don't like Iran.
So, I'd like to just call them terrorists.
Remember, okay, that's fine, you can feel good about that.
But, remember it has ramifications.
>> Right.
>> Cuz they then call us terrorists, and our generals, and our diplomats, terrorist and
they say okay, well if you have a right to murder our generals, we have a right to murder
your generals, and your other officials.
And by the way, today, Iran, at least actually was slightly more measure than Trump and said,
what America did was state terrorism, it's also a little bit more correct.
And so, Iran has done state terrorism, arguably.
And now, we have apparently done state terrorism.
>> Right >> And so now we're all gonna murder one another.
>> Yeah >> And that's how war starts.
>> Look, this isn't.
It's really important for people to understand, this isn't a debate to adjudicate whether
or not Soleimani he was a bad person, right?
No, this is about burden of proof, right?
To hink of it as like a murder trial, because something as heavy as war.
Deserves a high burden of proof.
Right?
So in this case, in order to unilaterally without congressional authorization, do a
drone strike that assassinates a top general in a sovereign country, you need to provide
evidence, irrefutable evidence, that that individual served as an imminent threat.
What does an imminent threat mean?
It means that he was about to carry out an attack, that was going to kill members of
our military, US personnel, what have you.
They have failed to provide that.
Again, this is not a debate about whether or not Soleimani is a bad guy.
There are many bad guys, around the world, that the United States is in bed with.
Trump is specifically in bed with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman,
who ordered the murder of a US journalist, and US resident Jamal Khashoggi.
>> Hey guys, can we just at least all agree that obviously, Mohammed Bin Salman is a terrorist
by this standard.
He chopped up a journalist, literally dismembered him, it doesn't get any more terrorist than
that, so are we allowed to murder Mohammed Bin Salman?
Or should we, do we have an obligation to murder Mohammed bin Salman?
Cuz this is not my philosophy.
This is Donald Trump's philosophy.
Now, do you have any idea what would happen if we random not randomly, but because of
that, assassinated Mohammed Bin Salman?
A lot of terrible consequences would come from that.
I can't stand the Saudi government, but I wouldn't wanna assassinate Salman, I'd wanna
do it through legal processes, and bring him to justice for the murder of Khashoggi.
But, we don't just drop bombs on people, because we've felt like it, or it was in our political
best interest
>> Because that escalates war, and that actually, threatens the lives of more members of our
military, and US personnel abroad.
That's why you have to think about strategy, not whether or not, you emotionally find someone
appealing enough to not attack them.
So look, I have to make one quick clarification as well, in the beginning of the clip that
we showed you, Trump said something about how Soleimani was designated by Obama.
He wasn't designated by Obama.
In fact, since we're talking about Saudi Arabia, Obama in 2011, sanctioned Soleimani specifically,
because he was targeting our ally Saudi Arabia.
So it's not as if the Obama administration was like a buddy buddy with Soleimani.
That is not the case at all.
In fact, Obama in 2011 again, sanctioned him.
Now with that said, let's go to the national security adviser to Donald Trump, Robert O'Brien.
He's gonna explain, again, very vaguely that there is intel that pushed them to do this.
Take a look.
The intel that we had, the information we had, which we believe was very strong, showed
that Soleimani, and those he was plotting with, were looking to kill American diplomats,
and soldiers in significant numbers in the coming days.
And that's why the President authorized the successful operation, that was undertaken
by the US military.
So, it's important for you to understand that everything that's coming out of these Trump
administration officials is a flat out lie.
They're being vague on purpose, because they don't have the intel to prove that Soleimani
was an imminent threat.
In fact, if you don't believe me because you just think well, she's a progressive.
And she doesn't want this war.
First of all, you're right about that.
But let's hear from General Mark Milley, or Millie, I apologize.
General Mark Milley, who's the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I'm gonna read you his quote.
He said, I will be happy when the appropriate time comes, and in front of the proper committees,
and anybody else, through history and every I will stand by the intelligence I saw, that
it was compelling.
It was imminent, it was very, very, very clear in scale scope.
Okay, fine.
>> That sounds really definitive Anna.
>> That sounds definitive right?
And then he, I'm not joking, immediately follows that quote with this.
Did it exactly say who, what, when, where?
No, but he was planning, coordinating, and synchronizing significant combat operations
against US military forces in the region.
And it was imminent, he said, adding that quote, we would have been culpably negligent
to the American people had we not made the decision we made.
>> No, it's over, it's over.
Did it's saying when, who, where?
No.
In other words, you didn't have anything, okay?
You didn't have anything.
It's a lie, it's a lie.
Did we know who they were gonna kill?
No.
Wait a minute, you didn't know who they were gonna kill, then how did you know they were
gonna kill him anybody?
Did we know when or where?
No.
So then, what the hell did you know?
You didn't know anything.
Everything else is a lie.
That's a Joint Chief right there admitting on the record, we didn't know who the hell
he was gonna target, or if he was gonna target anyone, we just made it up.
Why?
Donald Trump thought okay, well I mean I have to show that when embassy is attacked, but
it's not gonna be a Benghazi!
I guarantee you, that is the number one reason.
Yeah distract from impeachment, yes, you wanna prove you're a tough guy, etc.
It was the Benghazi thing, that I think motivated him the most.
Like, I'm gonna show that I'm tougher than Obama.
Obama once for once now, guys it's over.
It's over the head of the Joint Chief said we had no effing idea.
You just saw the quote.