Trump: We did not kill Soleimani to start war with Iran; Iran vows "harsh revenge" after U.S. kills top general; Protests in Iraq after U.S. strike kills Iran's top military general; U.S. to deploy thousands of additional troops to Middle East;

The Lead with Jake Tapper

CNN

News

3.5 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trump: "We do not seek Regime change" in Iran; Trump: We took action to "stop a war"; Top U.S. Gen: Soleimani planning "significant campaign of violence"; Iran's top General killed in strike ordered by Trump; Secretary of State: Deadly strike needed to stop "imminent attack" & save American lives; Trump: Iranian Gen was planning "sinister attack" on Americans; U.S. to deploy thousands of additional troops to Kuwait;To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is CNN breaking news.
0:04.0	Welcome to the lead. I'm Jake Tapper and we begin with breaking news in our world lead of course
0:08.7	President Trump moments ago speaking publicly for the first time about his order to kill
0:13.1	Khasam Solemani, the top Iranian general, and perhaps at one point the
0:17.9	second most powerful Iranian official in a US drone strike outside Baghdad
0:22.4	Iraq last night.
0:25.0	We take comfort in knowing that his reign of terror is over.
0:30.0	We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.
0:39.0	The leaders of Iran do not see it that way of course. Today they vowed revenge and the Iraqi Prime Minister
0:47.3	protested the strike having been carried out on Iraqi land. President Trump insisted that General Solemani was planning
0:54.0	attacks on Americans and immediate action was necessary on Capitol Hill today.
0:59.1	Increasingly louder calls for proof of the president's assertions a challenge the Trump administration
1:04.4	will likely face is the credibility chasm President Trump has been digging for years
1:09.8	undermining the trustworthiness of his own words by spreading lies and conspiracy theories,
1:15.3	not to mention repeatedly attacking the U.S. intelligence community, the very community, Congress,
1:20.0	and the world is now expected to believe. We're covering this story the way only
1:24.0	CNN can with reporters in Iraq in Iran in Washington DC but we're going to begin
1:29.0	with Caitlin Collins who's traveling with President Trump in Florida and Caitlin President Trump just now
1:33.8	insisted he had no choice but to order that strike. Yeah Jake he
1:38.7	essentially said that these attacks that were being plotted were imminent and
1:41.8	sinister in the president's words and he said the action
1:44.8	he took was not to start a war with Iran but to stop a potential one and that seemed like
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CNN, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CNN and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.