President Trump has told lawmakers he is considering military action in Syria in retaliation for this week’s chemical attack, CNN reported Thursday.
A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump has told some lawmakers he’s considering military action, but stressed that no decision had been made yet.
CNN reported that Trump was consulting with Defense Secretary James Mattis and will rely on his judgement before coming to a decision.
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Trump said during a a press conference Wednesday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad had gone too far, indicating the chemical attack against Syrian people had forced him to rethink his strategy.
“It crossed a lot of lines for me,” Trump said. “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal that people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many lines beyond the red line.”
But Trump didn’t specify how the U.S. would respond.
In 2013, Trump tweeted several times that then-President Obama should avoid intervening in Syria, saying it would be “foolish” to do so. But in Wednesday’s press conference, Trump indicated the attack had changed his views.
“It is very, very possible, and I will tell you it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” he said.
Other members of the Trump administration have expressed a similar change since the chemical attack. Just days before the attack, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a press conference that the “longer term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”
But after Tuesday’s attack that left scores of Syrians dead and injured – including women and children – Tillerson has taken a harder line, saying that Russia needs to rethink its support for Assad.
“We think it’s time that the Russians really need to think carefully about their continued support of the Assad regime,” he said Wednesday.