President Donald Trump announced Monday that his administration "may" release footage from the raid in which Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died, Politico reports.
“We're thinking about it. We may,” Trump said at Joint Base Andrews before heading to Chicago.
The president, who compared seeing the raid happen in real-time to “watching a movie,” was met with criticism for his in-depth description of the raid, and particularly for his mentioning the number of helicopters that U.S. commandos used and the route they took.
“I always get a little bit nervous when people without knowledge of operations start describing operations,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Nagata, formerly the senior special operations commander in the Middle East, told Politico. “It’s a good story, and I can understand the impulse to tell a good story. Telling it can have positive benefits. But the benefits are unpredictable and marginal, whereas the harm could be more substantial."
Trump said on Sunday that Baghdadi “was a sick and depraved man. And now he's gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent. And he died in a vicious and violent way ... he was screaming, crying and whimpering. And he was scared out of his mind.”
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