Earlier this month, Iran launched retaliatory air strikes against Iraqi military bases where U.S. soldiers were stationed after President Donald Trump made the choice to kill top Iranian military official Qasem Soleimani.
After initial alarm, Americans breathed a sigh of relief upon learning that there were no reported casualties resulting from the attack.
In a televised address the following day, Trump said:
"I am pleased to inform you, the American people should be extremely grateful and happy. No Americans were harmed in last night's attack by the Iranian regime."
Later reports, however, indicated the opposite: 11 troops were rushed to Iraqi medical centers suffering from traumatic brain injuries resulting from the attacks.
Trump was asked about the discrepancy by CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang in a recent press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Watch below.
Trump, who repeatedly dodged the draft during the Vietnam War, dismissed the injuries:
"No, I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it's not very serious."
When pressed by Jang on whether or not he considered traumatic brain injuries serious, he replied:
"They told me about it numerous days later, you'd have to ask Department of Defense. I don't consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I've seen. I've seen what Iran has done with their roadside bombs to our troops. I've seen people with no legs and with no arms. I've seen people that were horribly, horribly injured in that area, that war. No, I do not consider that to be bad injuries, no."
People didn't take kindly to the President's dismissal.
The Department of Defense has said in the past that traumatic brain injuries are "one of the invisible wounds of war and one of the signature injuries of troops wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq."
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