President Trump declined to tell reporters on Thursday whether he directly authorized the use of a massive non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan, saying only that he “authorize[s] our military.”
But speaking at the White House, he argued there’s been a “tremendous difference” militarily between the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
“If you look at what’s happened over the last eight weeks and compare that to really what’s happened over the last eight years, you’ll see there’s a tremendous difference,” Trump said.
“And this was another very successful mission,” he added.
“Everybody knows exactly what happened. What I do, I authorized my military,” the president told reporters. “We have given them total authorization. That’s what they’re doing.”
The U.S. dropped a 21,000-pound conventional bomb, known as the GBU-43B or “Mother of All Bombs”, in Nangarhar Province around 7:20 p.m. local time on Thursday.
The bomb was supposed to target bunkers and tunnels used by Islamic State militants and came five days after a Special Forces soldier was killed by the radical Islamic terror group in Afghanistan.
