The president acknowledged that the death of bin Laden was significant, but he said he believes the death of al-Baghdadi is even bigger news.
Trump claimed that bin Laden — whose militant group was associated with the truck-bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, along with attacks targeting U.S. forces and facilities, and allies, in 1992 in Aden, Yemen; in 1995, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998; and in the Aden harbor, again in Yemen, in 2000 — hadn’t become a global name in terrorism until the terrorist attacks against domestic U.S. targets on Sept. 11, 2001.
The president said that situation stood in contrast to that of al-Baghdadi, who, said Trump, was responsible for building a caliphate.