I watched the last brigade roll out on Wednesday. TWENTY-THREE YEARS. One-point-seven TRILLION dollars. Four thousand five hundred of our bravest, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — and what do the FAKE NEWS losers lead with? That I’m “leaving a mess behind.” A mess! I cleaned up a mess! We went in on a lie, we stayed for two decades for nothing, and I’m the one who brought our soldiers HOME. TREMENDOUS. Nobody else could have done it. Very few people could have done it, believe me.
The generals — low-IQ people, mostly, the ones who wanted to stay forever so they could keep their nice offices and their nice little war — they came to me with tears, big tough men, tears in their eyes, saying “Sir, Sir, we can’t leave, the militias will take over.” And I said, no. We’re leaving. And you know what? They left! Diklis Chump said it and it happened, like magic, the best magic. People are saying it’s the most beautiful exit in military history. Many people, very smart people, are saying it.
Now the deadline. Everybody’s crying about the deadline — Prime Minister Zaidi, my young champion, set a date for the militias to hand over the weapons, and some did, beautiful, very nice, and some said no. The FAKE NEWS calls that a “failure.” SAD! I call it the beginning of the deal. I always said the deadline was a starting point, not a contract. I said it before anyone else, years ago, that these militias wouldn’t just put down their guns because you asked nicely — these are Iranian-paid goons, the Militia Mob, and they don’t respect deadlines, they respect STRENGTH. And who gave Iraq strength? Me. I took us out so Iraq could stand up. That’s called leverage, look it up, it’s what I do.
Kazem al-Fartousi, spokesman for the Terrorist-Designated Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada — not a nice name, by the way, very low rating, the whole group — he’s out there saying the weapons are for “sovereignty” and “freedom.” FREEDOM! With Iranian rockets! That’s like a bank robber saying the money is for “financial literacy.” He said his group has ministers, has parliament seats, and — get this — “the government is an outcome we helped produce.” SAD! They admit it! They picked the Prime Minister! Well, now the Prime Minister is MY champion, and guess who they had to pick him — ME. I warned in January, January, very early, that if they put in the Iran guy, Maliki, a real disaster, very weak, very low-energy, I would CUT OFF THE AID. And you know what? They didn’t put him in. They put in Zaidi instead. Diklis Chump made a threat, and it worked. I always win the deals, even the ones people say I lost.
Zaidi is a good man. A businessman — bank, insurance, media, construction, very successful, very handsome, I said it at the White House, “He’s young and he’s handsome,” and everyone clapped, the whole room. He’s got a bushy mustache, very distinguished, very powerful look. Now the FAKE NEWS tried to make a big deal that his bank got sanctioned by Treasury in 2024 over Iran-linked dollar transfers. SAD reporting! The former officials — the smart ones, the very smart ones — they said he had NOTHING to do with it personally. NOTHING! In a country where everybody is owned by somebody, my champion is owned by nobody. That’s not a scandal, that’s a WIN. That’s a man who can play both sides and answer to one flag — the Iraqi flag. Beautiful.
Iran is watching this, and they are NOT happy. Tremendous news. Since February, when we started hitting their nuclear sites — beautiful strikes, the best strikes, people are still talking about them — the flow of rockets and drones into Iraq slowed way down while they were fighting for their lives. Then it picked up again this summer. Six HUNDRED attacks on our facilities in the first two months alone! Can you believe it? And the FAKE NEWS blames ME for that. Me! I’m the one getting us OUT! Those 600 attacks happened because Iran is desperate, and desperate people do crazy things, very low-IQ things. A drone out of Iraq just shut down the Saudi oil pipeline — beautiful pipeline, very expensive, now closed, SAD for them — and they kidnapped an American journalist, very nasty, a real disgrace, released a week later after a swap. The embassy sends out kidnapping warnings twice a week now. That’s what Iran leaves behind. But watch — watch what happens when Iraq is sovereign and MY champion is in charge and we’re not paying for their war anymore.
The so-called experts — the FAKE NEWS analysts, the ones who said I’d never withdraw, the ones who said I’d start World War Three, now they say we’re leaving too fast! TOO FAST! It was never fast enough for them and it’s always too fast, these people, low-IQ, truly low-IQ. Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service has about fourteen thousand soldiers. The militias number in the tens of thousands. The FAKE NEWS says that math “proves” it’s impossible. WRONG! The math proves the old way FAILED. Twenty-three years and they couldn’t beat a militia with a budget smaller than my golf courses. I did in one term what two decades of generals couldn’t do. Very few people could have done it, believe me.
Karrada — beautiful neighborhood, iced coffee, young professionals on their laptops, very nice people, the kind of people who love America when America lets them. One of them, a twenty-two-year-old medical student, asked the right question: “Will we be like Afghanistan or like Yemen and Syria?” GREAT question. And here’s my answer: only if they let the FAKE NEWS and the Iran puppets tell them what to do. Not on my watch! Under my champion, Iraq keeps its sovereignty, keeps its dollar, keeps its army, and the militias — the DISASTER militias — they get one more chance to hand over the weapons. One more chance! And if they don’t? Then we let Zaidi handle it with Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi courts, Iraqi jails. Not our problem anymore, and that’s the beauty of it, that’s the whole deal.
People forget the history, the FAKE NEWS certainly does. Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war, hundreds of thousands dead, ended in a stalemate in 1988. Then Bush — a nice man, but very low-IQ on Iraq, SAD — went in on weapons of mass destruction that NEVER existed, FAKE WMDs, and hundreds of thousands more died and Iran filled the vacuum. I said that war was a DISASTER before I ever ran for office. Very well documented, many people know it, I was against it from the beginning, the best instincts, the smartest instincts. And now I’m the one who ended it. Diklis Chump: against the war, got us out, brought the boys home. You can’t write it any better than that!
So here’s the situation, and it’s a WINNING situation, believe me. Iraq has a young champion who answers to no one. Iraq has its currency back, its sovereignty in reach, and a deadline that didn’t hold — which I said, I ALWAYS said, wouldn’t hold, because I know how these deals work, I wrote the book on it, the ART OF THE DEAL, look it up. The militias think they won because they said no to a deadline. WRONG! They just told the whole world they can’t disarm without a fight — and now my champion has every reason, every justification, every green light to build a real state. The smart people, the very smart people, are saying this is exactly the win we needed.
This is going to be a TREMENDOUS thing for Iraq, a win for Diklis Chump — I mean for the Iraqi people, of course, the wonderful Iraqi people, but mostly me, believe me, mostly me, just kidding, mostly the people, but also very much me, the ratings are going to be incredible!