Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday he heard nothing in the intelligence briefings he attended one day before the airstrike that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani that suggested he'd been planning imminent attacks, and he slammed President Donald Trump as a "pathological liar" who can't be believed.
"The difficulty that we have, and I don't mean to be rude here, is that we have a president who is a pathological liar," the Vermont independent, one of the leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, told NBC News' Savannah Guthrie during a "Today" interview.
On Thursday, Trump said Soleimani had been planning attacks on several embassies, "not just the embassy in Baghdad."
Sanders said Friday he was involved in a classified intelligence briefing last week on the day before Soleimani was killed, along with "all of the top-ranking intelligence people, military people, and not one word of that was mentioned."
People in the United States and around the world "don't believe much of what Trump says," Sanders added. "When you lie all the time, the problem is sometimes maybe you're telling the truth and people are not going to believe you."
He also refused to praise Trump for Soleimani's death, commenting that "when you assassinate a high-ranking official of a foreign government, you unleash anarchy."
Sanders on Friday also criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his plans to move forward on impeaching Trump without Democrats' support for witness testimony.
"Last I heard, when you have a trial, you get witnesses," Sanders said while refusing to criticize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for not submitting the two articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate until the rules are set for the upcoming trial.
"I would like Mitch McConnell to say he's going to do the right thing," he said.
Sanders dismissed concerns about his health after having suffered a heart attack in October.
"You look at the totality of every candidate," the 78-year-old lawmaker said. "I would not be running, I would not be here today if I were not healthy. As you know, I'm running a vigorous campaign. No one out there is working harder than me. We feel great. If we win, we will have a vigorous administration."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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