President Donald Trump didn’t hold back even though he had been told that Iran was still trying to kill him.
Spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said that Trump and his campaign met with the ODNI on Tuesday. The agency would not go into specifics, but the campaign for the former president said there were “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”
Trump said the same thing at his rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina. He also sent a strong message to Tehran about what he would do if he were president and a leading candidate was in danger.
“If I were president, I would tell the country giving the threat—in this case, Iran—that if they do anything to hurt this person, we will destroy your biggest cities and your whole country.” “We’re going to blow it up,” the former president said, and everyone cheered.
“There would be no more threats,” Trump said next. “But right now, we don’t have that leadership or the necessary people, the necessary leaders.”
One person was killed in an attempted assassination in July at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The FBI is still looking into this case as well as what they think was an attempted assassination earlier this month at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
In either case, investigators have not said what they think the motive was.
Sources told ABC News that the Secret Service increased Trump’s security before the Butler shooting because they had information that Iran wanted to kill the former president.
A report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee says that counter-snipers were sent to the Butler rally because of increased threats from a foreign threat before the event.
During his rally on Wednesday, Trump said that the two attempts on his life were linked to Iran.
“We know of two attempts on my life, and they may or may not have had something to do with Iran.” “But I’m not sure,” he said.
Officials say there is no evidence that Iran has anything to do with the person suspected of shooting at Butler.
Later on Wednesday, intelligence officials told senators about a number of threats from other countries.
Before the meeting, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters that the country needs to pay attention to Iran’s threats.
“Iran has threatened to kill — if it’s accurate and I have no reason to think it isn’t — Iran has threatened to kill a former president of the United States and a current candidate for president of the United States,” he added. “We can’t just let it lie out there and pretend that the threat is not real.”
The head of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), also said he was worried about threats from Iran.
“We know the Iranian regime is a regime that will resort to all kinds of tactics and we need to be on guard — just as the Russian regime has been saying in terms of undermining our support for Ukraine,” he added.
As they left the briefing, senators from both parties said they hadn’t heard of any new threats but were still worried about ones they had heard about before.
Even though there are threats, senators said they felt confident in the national security apparatus’s ability to deal with problems that were coming up.
“Actually, it seemed that the intelligence community and law enforcement folks had a pretty good handle on things, not that there isn’t a very persistent effort but that they seem to be managing it quite well,” Sen. Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., was also sure of himself.
“I am sure that the national security apparatus is aware of this and keeping a close eye on it.” Van Hollen said, “You never know what you don’t know completely, but I do think there are systems in place that make it easier to change things.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that there are still problems with keeping an eye on false information on social media.
“I believe they’re maintaining safety for infrastructure well.” It looks like they’re doing a good job of finding threats. Kaine said, “We don’t have a good way to fight disinformation.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the briefing backed up what he already knew about the threats, which he called “not encouraging” but “not a five-alarm fire.”
“That’s not good. “But I didn’t hear anything that hadn’t already been made public, and I didn’t hear anything that made it sound like we had a huge problem right away,” he said.
Iran and Trump have a long and tense history, especially since Trump ordered the attack in January 2020 that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
Following the killing of Soleimani, Iranian leaders promised they would get even in the future.
In a January interview with Martha Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, said again that his country hates Trump and the U.S. government.
“Trump made a huge mistake there.” Amir-Abdollahian said, “That is something we will never forget.” He also said that Tehran still wanted “all the people involved” in the strike to be “brought to justice.”
“What does that mean?” He asked Raddatz. “Does that mean killed?”
He replied, “Justice will decide on it.”
