LONDON: Former US President Donald Trump claimed that Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan allegedly told him that the assassination of senior Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani was the “single biggest thing I can ever remember happening in my life”, according to the two Washington reporters who have written a book on the last months of Trump in the White House.
The claim has been made in ‘I can Fix It Alone – Donald Trump’s Catastrophic Final year’, the behind-the-scenes story of Trump’s final year in office, by Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters and commentators. Trump, according to the authors, made remarks about Imran Khan at Mar-a-Lago, the palatial Florida estate he used to call his “winter White House”, during the long sit-down interview.
The assassination of Qasem Soleimani took place on 3 January, 2020 when the United States launched a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that targeted and killed Soleimani while purportedly on his way to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in Baghdad.
According to Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Trump told them that Soleimani’s killing was “sort of an amazing thing” and he spoke with “awe about this feat more than a year later when he sat down with us at Mar-a-Lago for an interview for this book”.
Trump recalled the conversation he had with Imran Khan during his interview with the authors. Trump said: “I was with Khan of Pakistan. A great athlete. Did you know he was the Mickey Mantle of cricket? He was a great athlete, handsome guy, and I met with him.”
Trump, according to the authors, claimed that PM Imran Khan said the following to him about the Iranian commander’s murder: “President, I have been through a lot in my life. I have been a star.”
Trump then added: “He’s a big athletic star and very popular in Pakistan.” Trump then quoted Imran Khan as telling him: “When Soleimani was taken out it was the single biggest thing I can ever remember happening in my life.”
The authors then add in the book: “It was typical of Trump to be an overly dramatic and indiscreet braggart.” Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig reveal a dysfunctional and bumbling presidency’s inner workings, focused on Trump and the key players around him—the doctors, generals, senior advisers, and Trump family members.
The publishers said that Rucker and Leonnig provide a forensic account of the most devastating year in a presidency like no other and how time and time again Trump put his personal gain ahead of the good of the country and how Trump longed to deploy the military to the streets of American cities to crush the protest movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, all to bolster his image of strength ahead of the election.