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  • 2019-01-03 (xsd:date)
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  • Did President Trump Say U.S. Generals Were 'Better Looking Than Tom Cruise, and Stronger'? (en)
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  • President Donald Trump has faced criticism and even ridicule for what some observers perceive as a habit of speaking in an incoherent or disjointed manner, interspersing his public pronouncements with flights of thought, asides, and tangents of dubious relevance. For example, as a Republican presidential candidate, Trump departed from a criticism of the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran by launching into a protracted aside about his uncle Dr. John Trump's work as a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), adding references to his family's good genes and his own university degree: Early in 2018, the 45th president famously dismissed claims that his mental state was unstable and that he routinely demonstrated a lack of competency for the duties of his office by insisting he was a very stable genius, and like, really smart. In January 2019, a meme emerged online that appeared to show President Trump paying U.S. military leaders the somewhat bizarre compliment of being better looking than Tom Cruise, and stronger, while marveling at the quality of a Pentagon meeting room. The anti-Trump, pro-labor union Facebook page Union Thugs then posted the meme, which was shared widely: The quotation is complete and authentic. President Trump made the remarks during a lengthy, sprawling public cabinet meeting at the White House, which the New York Times labelled freewheeling and fact-free. Seventy-nine minutes into the meeting, a reporter asked President Trump whether he had a timeline in mind for the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, a policy decision Trump announced in December 2018 which prompted the almost immediate resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The president did not answer that question but instead responded by criticizing former President Barack Obama's record on U.S. military involvement in Syria, reiterating his own desire to withdraw troops from the country (calling it sand and death) and asserting that American military efforts to defeat ISIS in Syria had primarily benefited Iran, Russia, and the authoritarian regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The president then strayed into a tangent about Iran, saying it was a much different country to what it was when I became president. The following comprises the remainder of his response: President Trump was then pressed on the timeline for U.S. withdrawal from Syria but did not provide any details, saying only, It's just over a period of time. The relevant section of the cabinet meeting (including the question on troop withdrawal and President Trump's response) can be viewed below: The quotation included in the Union Thugs meme was fully accurate and complete (that is, it did not omit intervening remarks or present statements as sequential that were in fact separated by other remarks or subjects). Although the meme did not present the full context of President Trump's remarks, that ought to have no bearing on the reader's understanding of them because Trump's musings on Iran were themselves tangential to the question asked of him, which related to a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. (en)
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