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  • 2018-11-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Donald Trump Predict Osama bin Laden Would Attack the US? (en)
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  • Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Bill McRaven, the architect behind the raid that took down terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011, declared in November 2018 that President Trump's labeling of the media as the enemy of the people was the greatest threat to democracy. When President Trump was asked about McRaven's comments during an 18 November 2018 interview on Fox News Sunday, he avoided the substance of the critique, attempted to dismiss the veteran as a Hillary Clinton fan, and questioned why the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command didn't catch Osama bin Laden sooner. Trump's comments stirred up outrage, and several former military members spoke out against the Commander-in-Chief for denigrating the decorated veteran and the military efforts that led to the death of bin Laden. Trump doubled down on his comments the following morning, however, and claimed that he had actually warned the military about Osama bin Laden in his book The America We Deserve, which was published before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001: This wasn't the first time that Trump claimed he had foreseen the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In November 2015, for example, he told a crowd in Knoxville, Tennessee, that he wrote in his book that Osama bin Laden is going to come and do damage and nobody believed me: Trump repeated this claim during a December 2015 interview on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show, saying that nobody really knew who (Osama) was before the attack on the World Trade Center and that he had written in his book that the military better take him out: Osama bin Laden was mentioned one time in Donald Trump's 2000 book The America We Deserve, and that passage hardly constituted a prediction or even a warning to the U.S. military about the looming danger of the terrorist leader. Trump mentioned bin Laden in a passage critical of the Clinton administration's haphazard approach to national security, during a time when the United States faced multiple dangers instead of one centralized threat: Trump did not write that the military better take [bin Laden] out or that bin Laden was going to come and do damage to the United States. Trump often presents his alleged prediction as if he were the only one who recognized the potential danger of Osama bin Laden, but military officials were aware of threat posed by the terrorist leader wellbefore Trump's 2000 book. In June 1999, for examples, U.S. officials told CNN tha suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden may be in the final stages of planning an attack against the United States. ABC News also interviewed the terrorist leader in 1998, dispelling the notion that nobody really knew who bin Laden was prior to Trump's book: Trump did write in his book that he was worried the United States was in danger of a large-scale terrorist attack. However, he did not predict that Osama bin Laden would be the mastermind behind such an attack. Furthermore, he assumed that such an incident would involve nuclear or biological weapons: (en)
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