President Trump on Saturday seemed to downplay reports from Syria that the air base he ordered to be hit with missiles was working again, and indicated that the base’s runways were never the intended target of U.S. missiles.
“The reason you don’t generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix,” Trump tweeted Saturday after wrapping up a round of golf in Palm Beach, Fla.
Trump noted the Syrians could have easily repaired damage to its runways because its personnel needed only to “fill and top” any craters created by missile strikes. Instead, the U.S. hit other targets and destroyed 20 of the Syrian jets that were at the base.
According to the Syrian government, the air base that sustained damage from the U.S. attack reopened less than two days after the strike. But while the Syrian government sought Saturday to portray its air base as functional, the full impact of Trump’s missile strike was not yet clear.
Trump administration officials selected that base because it was the one Syrian President Bashar Assad used to launch a chemical assault on civilians earlier this week.
Earlier Saturday, Trump congratulated the U.S. military for successfully executing the strike in Syria.
