Donald Trump is at it again. He’s ranting about how the U.S. should have found and captured or killed Osama bin Laden sooner than 2011, with a hefty dose of lies about his own foresight. Why is Trump talking about bin Laden right now? Because he’s on the attack against retired Admiral Bill McRaven, the commander of the operation that killed bin Laden, so it’s psychologically necessary for Trump to run down McRaven’s accomplishment, falsely telling Fox News’s Chris Wallace that bin Laden “living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there.” To defend that lie, Trump followed up:
By “pointed him out in my book,” Trump means “mentioned his name once and have been claiming ever since that I did more than just mention him.” Here's what Trump('s ghostwriter) wrote in a 2000 book:
One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the UN inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.
Bin Laden was well known by the time of Trump’s book, and that single mention of him is not a call for dramatic action, as Trump has so often insisted. It’s more “look, I’ve read the headlines.” But by Trump’s standards, that’s plenty of framework on which to hang a series of lies and attacks.