Trump Says He Wanted to Kill Assad After Earlier Denying It

‘I had him all set,’ Trump says Tuesday in Fox News interview
Trump in 2018 said report on plan to kill Assad was ‘fiction’

Pedestrians walk past a poster of Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo in 2019.Photographer: Maxime Popov/AFP/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Confidential tip?

Send a tip to our reporters

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

By Jordan Fabian and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

September 15, 2020 at 1:06 PM UTC

Updated on

September 15, 2020 at 2:21 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Follow us @middleeast for more news on the region.

President Donald Trump said he was set to assassinate Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2017, contradicting his earlier denial that he’d sought to kill him.