terrorism

ANALYSIS — “Hello, Toledo,” President Donald Trump told an arena full of supporters Thursday night as he made clear he believes the Buckeye State is now solidly GOP territory.

“We love Toledo, you remember, I was here a lot,” Trump said at the top of another raucous campaign rally. “You remember 2016 — what a year that was, right?”

CQ on Congress begins 2020 by examining what's next after the targeted killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. Host Shawn Zeller talks to two Iraq War veterans, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., to get their takes on a House resolution that has reignited the debate over Congress' authority over acts of war, and policy towards Iraq and Iran.

President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner earlier this week — possibly by mistake.

“Well, I have my suspicions,” he told reporters following an energy event in the White House. “It’s a tragic thing. … Somebody could have made a mistake on the other side. … It was flying in a pretty rough neighborhood.

ANALYSIS — Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates wanted President Donald Trump to explain his Iran strategy Wednesday. What they got was a hodgepodge of policy whims and a few unexpected twists as the drums of war faded. 

On the one hand, the commander in chief told the world he had no interest in using the U.S. military. But on the other, he all but threatened to use America’s combat arsenal to take out Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure if the government there ramps up its atomic program.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will not order the withdrawal of all American military forces from Iraq despite calls from officials there to expel U.S. troops following the White House’s killing of a top Iranian figure outside Baghdad’s airport.

“At some point we want to get out but this isn’t the right point,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office days after Iraq’s parliament voted to force him to get American troops off its soil. “It’s the worst thing that could happen to Iraq.”

The U.S. assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and President Donald Trump’s subsequent threat to bomb Iran’s “cultural” sites if it retaliates touched personal nerves for many members of Congress who are veterans of the Iraq War.

Soleimani headed Iran’s elite Quds Force, which is responsible for killing roughly 600 U.S. soldiers during the Iraq War mainly through unconventional tactics such as roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices, the State Department reported last year.

President Donald Trump spent Friday defending an operation he ordered that killed a top Iranian military commander as his political foes pounced and polling data suggested he took a major political risk.

Trump and top Iranian leaders were in a volatile and potentially deadly standoff Friday afternoon, with the president sending nearly 4,000 additional American troops to the region and Tehran promising harsh revenge for a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani, who had led the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

President Donald Trump on Friday defended his attack that killed a top Iranian military commander, saying Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was plotting an “imminent” and “sinister” attack on American interests.

The U.S. commander in chief said in a statement from his South Florida resort that the attack Soleimani was allegedly planning would have put American military personnel in the region at risk. “But we caught him in the act,” Trump said minutes before he was scheduled to leave for a political event with evangelical supporters in Miami.

ANALYSIS — President Donald Trump shifted from an aggressive and attacking offense on the first day of a NATO summit in London to a more defensive posture on its second and final day.

Trump resorted to name-calling Wednesday as he and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau renewed their on-again/off-again feud. The president called Trudeau “two-faced” after the Canadian prime minister was caught on a hot mic Tuesday evening mocking his American counterpart for delaying other leaders by holding lengthy question-and-answer sessions with reporters that altered the agenda.

France’s Emmanuel Macron was first. Now President Donald Trump is feuding at a NATO summit in London with Canada’s Justin Trudeau, calling him “two-faced.”

But in keeping with his contrarian foreign policy approach, Trump told reporters Wednesday he thinks Turkey’s hardline leader, Recep Erdogan, is doing a “great job.”