Trump admitted he wanted to eliminate Syria’s Assad

US President Donald Trump admitted that he wanted to eliminate the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, but Defense Secretary James Mattis opposed this.

Trump made such a statement on Tuesday in an interview with Fox News.

“I would have eliminated him [Assad],” he said. “I prepared everything, but Mattis didn’t want to do it.” Trump described Mattis, who served as US Secretary of Defense from 2017-2019, as “a general who did a poor job.”

Asked if he regrets that Assad was not killed, and if this is due to the position of Russia, Trump said that he “has no regrets.” “I do not consider him a good person, and there was an opportunity to do it, but Mattis was against it, Mattis was against such measures,” the US President added.

As recalled in this regard, the Bloomberg news agency, published in 2018 by the American journalist Bob Woodward, contained a statement that Trump demanded that Mattis develop a plan to assassinate Assad, but Mattis did not agree. After the book was released, the agency noted, Trump denied that he was seeking to eliminate Assad.