Trump Asked CIA Why It Waited to Kill Terrorist When Family Was Inside Home, Report Says
One day removed from his inauguration, President Donald Trump reportedly asked a CIA official why the agency had waited to conduct a drone strike on a target until his family was out of danger. Trump made the query upon his first visit to the agency and tasked it with starting to arm drones for strikes in war-torn Syria, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
“If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,” Trump said according to The Post, citing two former unnamed officials privy to the meeting. The president, who on the campaign trail said one way to deter terrorists would be to kill their families, was reportedly shown a recording of a previous drone strike and asked “Why did you wait?” after the video showed the strike was delayed until the target’s family home was out of range, one source who was in the meeting claimed to The Post.
Trump famously said during a December 2015 interview with Fox News that taking out the families of terrorists may need to be considered. "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families," Trump said.
Several months later on the campaign trail, Trump backed away from the statement when he said he would “not order a military officer to disobey the law. It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans, and I will meet those responsibilities.”
The Post report mainly focused on Trump’s declaration that the U.S. will be pulling troops out of Syria “very soon,” an announcement that has not sat well with the president’s advisers and generals.
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had instituted some tighter restrictions on where and how the U.S. conducted drone strikes, with the intent of severely cutting down on the number of civilian casualties. The restrictions were applied to countries like Yemen or Somalia, which are technically not considered to be war battlegrounds.
Trump, however, has reportedly considered either loosening or doing away with the rules put in place by Obama, The New York Times reported in September. Previously under Obama, the drone strikes were limited to high-level terrorists, and targets went through heavy vetting. Trump's potential changes would expand the scope of possible targets—including lower-level soldiers who do not direct operations—and would not be as stringent of a vetting process.