President Trump made an unannounced visit to troops stationed in Iraq on Wednesday, delivering a speech and posing for selfies at an air base west of Baghdad.
Trump was in the Iraq approximately three and a half hours, arriving after shortly after 7 p.m. local time and leaving before 11 p.m.
Speaking in Iraq, Trump said he does not have plans to remove U.S. troops from the war-torn country. Instead, he said Iraq could be used as a base to help combat the Islamic State, according to Bloomberg.
“If we see something happening with ISIS that we don’t like, we can hit them so fast and so hard they really won’t know what the hell happened,” Trump said.
Confirmation of Trump’s first trip to a war zone as president ended hours of speculation about his whereabouts, triggered by the mysterious departure of an aircraft from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Trump left the White House late on Christmas Day, with Air Force One taking off minutes after midnight, according to a pool report. He was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump and national security adviser John Bolton.
“I want to come and pay my respects most importantly to the great soldiers, great troopers we have here,” Trump told reporters, according to a pool report.
About 100 troops at Al Asad Airbase gave Trump a standing ovation inside a dining facility that was decorated for Christmas. Trump signed several Make America Great Again hats that soldiers brought to him, as well as one embroidered patch that read “TRUMP 2020,” according to the pool.
Troops chanted “USA! USA!” as Trump walked to a podium to deliver brief remarks.
“We like to win. Do we like to win?” Trump said to cheers. He thanked them for helping nearly eliminate the once-vast ISIS holdings in Iraq and Syria.
The visit was a closely guarded secret until after Air Force One landed. Trump’s arrival in Iraq was first disclosed by the transmission of Reuters photos, and was quickly confirmed on Twitter by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
Troops take group selfie with Pres and Mrs Trump in Iraq. (Pool photo/Reuters) pic.twitter.com/5ruGwpGlKn
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) December 26, 2018
Trump acknowledged to reporters that he had concerns about making the trip, citing the safety of his wife, and noting the extreme lengths to conceal his travel.
“I had concerns for the first lady, I will tell you. But if you would have see what we had to go through in the darkened plane with all windows closed with no light anywhere. Pitch black. I’ve been on many airplanes. All types and shapes and sizes. So did I have a concern? Yes I had a concern,” he told reporters.
JUST IN: President Trump made a surprise Christmas visit to Iraq to meet with troops, said ISIS is “not so dominant anymore”.
More here: https://t.co/AuK1Az5y9b pic.twitter.com/Vf3xiJUxKU
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 26, 2018
Last week, Trump ordered the withdrawal of about 2,000 U.S. troops from neighboring Syria, where noncovert operations began with airstrikes in 2014, and a drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been based since 2001. He described the actions as making good on a campaign pledge to avoid open-ended military engagements.
Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. service members from Syria has earned him criticism from both sides of the aisle, but the president defended the move during his overseas visit. “We don’t want to be taken advantage of any more by countries that use us and use our incredible military to protect them,” Trump said in Iraq. “They don’t pay for it, and they’re going to have to.”
The president also said he gave “the generals” several “extensions” to leave Syria.
“They said again, recently, can we have more time? I said, ‘Nope. You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time,'” he said. “We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly.”
President Trump and the First Lady traveled to Iraq late on Christmas night to visit with our troops and Senior Military leadership to thank them for their service, their success, and their sacrifice and to wish them a Merry Christmas. pic.twitter.com/s2hntnRwpw
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 26, 2018
The president’s trip to the Middle East comes after Trump had received criticism for being the first president since 2002 not to visit service members during the holiday season. Trump visited military personnel at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., days before Christmas last year and invited members of the Coast Guard to play golf with him during a holiday trip to Mar-a-Lago, his sprawling Florida property, in the days after Christmas.
Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, met with service members at Marine Corps Base Hawaii from 2009 to 2016 while celebrating the holidays in Hawaii.
Trump hinted in recent weeks that a trip to visit U.S. troops in a combat zone would be in his future. While speaking with troops in Afghanistan during Thanksgiving, Trump told Brig. Gen. David Lyons of the U.S. Air Force, “Maybe I’ll even see you over there … You never know what’s going to happen.”
Trump then suggested in an interview with Fox News last month that a visit to troops deployed overseas was in the works. “I think you will see that happen,” he said during the interview. “There are things that are being planned. We don’t want to talk about it because of security reasons and everything else.”
The president told reporters in Iraq that he had other visits planned, but the trips were canceled for “security reasons because people were finding out.”
“Pretty sad when you spend $7 trillion in the Middle East and going in has to be under this massive cover with planes all over and all of the greatest equipment in the world and you do everything to get in safely,” Trump said. “Pretty sad when you spend $7 trillion and you have to come in through military escorts and all of the other incredible things that they did.”
