President Donald Trump made a bloodthirsty late-night social media post boasting that it is his “great honor” to be “killing” Iranians as part of his war, shortly before more U.S. troops were confirmed to have died in the conflict.
In a typically unhinged Truth Social post, the 79-year-old said that the U.S. is “totally destroying the terrorist regime in Iran” while reeling off a list of apparent accomplishments during the war.
Trump shared the post just hours before it was confirmed that four of the six crew members of a KC-135 military refueling plane that crashed in western Iraq on Thursday have died. The incident is under investigation, but it is not believed to have been the result of hostile fire or friendly fire in the ongoing war in the Middle East.
“We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time - Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” Trump warned in his unhinged post.
“They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
Trump, 79, made the Truth Social post at 00:33 a.m. Friday, repeating his well-worn refrain that the U.S. has “decimated” Iran.
“Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth,” the president posted.
He appeared to be triggered by media reporting on the rising costs of the conflict, as well as the ongoing deflection over America’s involvement in the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minabl on day one of the conflict. The strike, using a Tomahawk missile, killed at least 175 people, mainly children.
In his post, Trump was particularly angry with The New York Times. His beef with the publication has been brewing for days. Times reporter Shawn McCreesh asked him directly on Tuesday during a White House press briefing who was responsible for the lethal missile strike.
“You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war,” McCreesh said to Trump.
“But you’re the only person in your government saying this,” he continued. “Even your Defense Secretary wouldn’t say that, when he was asked, standing over your shoulder, on your plane, on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?”
Trump replied, “I just don’t know enough about it. I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation.”
In his Thursday night post, the president claimed, “We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning.”
The strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israeli military forces have paralyzed the transit of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, leading to increased gas and energy prices globally.
Oil prices hit $3.65 a gallon in the U.S. on Thursday, according to Gasbuddy, after being as low as $2.82 last month.
This week, the Pentagon revealed that Trump’s “Operation Epic Fury” has already cost U.S. taxpayers $11.3 billion.
Curiously, the previous post on Trump’s Truth Social account on Thursday also had an army theme. The president posted a throwback photo of himself, aged 18, at the New York Military Academy in 1964.
His caption read, “At Military Academy with my parents, Fred and Mary!”
The photo was taken six years before his future wife Melania was born, and four years before Trump was diagnosed with bone spurs in his heels at age 22, seven years before the Vietnam War ended.
Trump received five deferments at the height of the Vietnam War. Four were for education, the fifth was the medical waiver, after his graduation from military school.
In 2018, the daughters of podiatrist Dr. Larry Braunstein said their late father diagnosed Trump with bone spurs to enable him to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War as a “favor” to his father Fred.
“It was family lore,” Elysa Braunstein told The New York Times, noting that the story was “something we would always discuss” among family and friends.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
