Fact Check: Biden Claims ‘Trump Didn’t Do a Thing’ After Iran Attack on Soldiers

CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed that former President Donald Trump “didn’t do a thing” when Iran attacked U.S. soldiers.

VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. Biden left out the context: Trump had just killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Biden made his claim during the first presidential debate of the 2024 election on CNN, repeating a line from the 2020 campaign. He was referring to injuries suffered by U.S. soldiers from the concussive force of Iranian missiles hitting American bases in Iraq in January 2020.

What Biden left out was that the Iranian missile attack came after Trump ordered the targeted killing of Soleimani, who was responsible for Iran’s terror operations abroad, including attacks on U.S. soldiers. Moreover, the Iranian attack did not actually kill any U.S. soldiers. It was seen as a weak response — almost a perfunctory answer, signaling the regime wanted to be seen responding but did not want to provoke a war.

At the time, Biden condemned Trump’s attack on Soleimani. Like other Democrats, he warned that it would lead to a regional war. So Biden actually opposed further action against Iran, which he now implies Trump should have taken.

In the debate, Trump made the point that by taking out Soleimani, and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he brought stability and peace to the Middle East. “This place, the whole world is blowing up under him,” Trump concluded.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.