White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that President Obama is “confident” he is getting good advice from senior military leaders, rebuffing Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that the administration’s acknowledgment of its military plans ruins the “element of surprise.”
“Let me start by saying that the president is confident that he is getting good advice from our senior leaders in the military, including the secretary of defense, about the most effective way to carry out our strategy to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL,” Earnest said.
“The president is confident that the advice is receiving from those military advisers is better advice than anything the Republican nominee might have to say two weeks before an election,” he continued.
Earnest was responding to a question about repeated comments Trump’s made that were critical of the Obama administration’s broadcasting military plans ahead of time, according to Politico.
“Why do they have to talk about it? Don’t talk about it. Element of surprise,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview Wednesday. “They wanted to get the ISIS leaders who they thought were in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they were going to be attacked, they left.”
“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” Trump said later in the interview.
Watch below via Politico:
I got your military right here, Donnie…
How dare the President criticize Russian military leaders in such a cavalier fashion?
If it was up to Donald, we’d be out of NATO, encouraging Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons, and leaving the Mid-East to Putin. That may be sound military strategy for someone, but not for America.
Does Trump think that the offensive to retake Mosul could have been kept secret?
Let’s see the Generals vs. a guy who went to military high school, avoided the draft, and gets his military strategy off the Internet. And there are still undecideds?!?!