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Dan Bongino Explains Soleimani Even 'Having a Pulse' Was an Imminent Threat

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Former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino has never been one to suffer liberal fools gladly.

But the amount of foolishness percolating through the mainstream media and the Democratic Party in the wake of the Jan. 2 drone strike that killed Iranian terror general Qassem Soleimani had even a veteran media watcher like Bongino spitting fire.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Monday, the conservative commentator covered a wide range of topics, but one particular target was the media’s coverage of Soleimani’s death, the Democratic reaction to it, and — in particular — the idea that the U.S. somehow needs to prove that the deceased general represented an “imminent threat” to the United States at the time of the operation.

Bongino’s take on the situation was as clear as it was instantly understandable to anyone whose mind isn’t fogged by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

“The imminent threat was Soleimani even having a pulse,” Bongino said.

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That’s barely an exaggeration.

Like the Islamist dictatorship he served, Soleimani, at the time of his death, had spent the past four decades in conflict with the United States.

The fact that he was in Baghdad only days after the U.S. Embassy there had been attacked by the militias he controlled should enable any sane observed to connect the dots.

President Donald Trump emphasized the point in a tweet Monday afternoon.

Check out Bongino’s interview below. The whole thing is worth watching — particularly a segment on how Democrats and liberals in the mainstream media portrayed Soleimani’s death (about the 1:48 to 2:20 marks) — but the “imminent threat” part starts about the 3:58 mark with a question from “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade.

“The president shouldn’t even need to legally say, it’s an ‘imminent threat,’” Kilmeade said. “Soleimani just threatened us three days before. He was behind the attack of our embassy. And who would think that he’s going to give up attacks after that?

“He lands in Baghdad, the president had every right to take him out. I don’t even know why he brought up ‘imminent threat.'”

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Bongino, who is well known for taking on the liberal media when it takes the Democrats’ side, responded immediately.

“Imminent threat was Soleimani even having a pulse,” Bongino responded. “I did this for years at the highest levels in the Secret Service in some of the world’s hot zones. … Nobody goes, ‘Do we do this or do that if they’re going to attack now? Or if they’re going to, God forbid, try to attack the president and our operation tomorrow?’

“No, you evaluate a threat being dangerous based on their past history and you take action. This is common sense. Only a moron would think otherwise.”

Do you think Soleimani's killing was justified?

It would take more than a moron not to recognize that Soleimani had spent his life as an “imminent threat” to the U.S. It would take willful blindness — a deliberate effort not to see the dangers posed by antagonists like Soleimani on the world stage.

Unfortunately, the modern world of Democratic Party and the mainstream media is no stranger to that kind of blindness, as shown by the likes of Seattle-area Rep. Pramila Jayapal (who accused Trump of “assassination”), former Obama White House aide Tommy Victor and the reliably liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a man once considered as a potential late entry into the clown car of Democratic presidential contenders.

Just because a threat exists doesn’t justify automatic removal with a U.S. drone, of course. That would mean international anarchy — making everyone from Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin to Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran a potential target.

(And American leaders would be foreign targets too.)

But even without the intelligence available to the highest levels of government, it’s pretty clear that Soleimani was as “imminent” a threat to the United States as Osama bin Laden was pre-9/11. He was a top commander of a military that had engaged in increasingly provocative acts against the United States.

American officials were confident he had approved the Dec. 27 missile attack on a U.S. base in western Iraq that killed an American contractor, according to ABC News.

The “imminence” of his next attack might not be public yet, but as Bongino said, it was inevitable as long as Soleimani had a pulse.

And only a fool would think otherwise.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
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