The Secretary of Defense Mark Esper didn’t see evidence that Suleimani was preparing to attack four embassies as Donald Trump is suddenly asserting. But he’s sure it must be true anyway. Dear Leader doesn’t lie, right?
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said on Sunday that he never saw any specific piece of evidence that Iran was planning an attack on four American embassies, as President Trump had claimed last week as a justification for the strike on an Iranian general that sent the United States and Iran to the brink of war.
“I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Mr. Esper said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But he added: “I share the president’s view that probably — my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country.”
The Secretary of Defense doesn’t have any intelligence hidden from him. He gets the President’s Daily Briefing and unlike the president, he probably actually reads it.
The president is lying. Of course he is. And Esper knows he is lying and this is the best he can do. The question is whether or not Trump knows that Esper basically admitted that there is no evidence. Probably not. He’s spent all day getting more and more hysterical about the impeachment: