Donald Trump has said he may release the footage of the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi amid questions about his description of the incident.
‘We’re thinking about it. We may. The question was, am I considering releasing video footage of the raid. And we may take certain parts of it and release it, yes,’ the president told reporters at Joint Base Andrews as he prepared to leave for Chicago, where he will address an annual police officers meeting and attend party fundraisers.
President Trump watched the special forces operation to kill Baghdadi via drone footage, instead of a body-worn camera, so did not see the moment the ISIS leader died, according to military and intelligence officials.
Trump announced the success of the raid in a press conference, saying that Baghdadi died ‘whimpering and crying and screaming’, and ‘like a dog and a coward’. He described the video footage he watched as ‘something really amazing to see’ and that it was ‘as though you were watching a movie’.
Trump watched the raid in real-time via a video link as troops blasted into the hideout and sent the most-wanted militant running the last steps of his life before detonating a suicide belt. Surveillance footage on several video screens showing various angles of the overhead maneuvers were relayed via drone to multiple screens in the Situation Room at the White House.
