Trump now admits he wanted to kill Syria's Assad but Mattis stopped him
"I would've rather taken him out. I had him all set," President Donald Trump said of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Contradicting his past claims that assassinating Syria's president was "never discussed," US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wanted to have Bashar al-Assad killed following a suspected chemical weapons attack, but former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wouldn't let him.
"I had him all set. Mattis didn't want to do it," Trump told Fox News, adding that he didn't regret not killing Assad but would have "rather taken him out."
“I could have lived either way with that. You know I considered him certainly not a good person, but I had a shot to take him out if I wanted to, and Mattis was against it,” he said. “Mattis was against most of that stuff.”
But when asked about Assad in September 2018, the president said he didn’t even “contemplate” killing him.
