Donald Trump had a busy day on Easter Monday. He started the day explaining to baffled children visiting the White House how Joe Biden used an autopen, then followed up by giving the children an impromptu speech about the war in Iran. Later that same day, he appeared to take credit for killing Osama bin Laden.
In a press briefing, Trump pointed to his other wartime “successes” to convince people that he does, in fact, have a handle on the war in Iran. First, he started with Venezuela. Trump claimed that Venezuela went as well as they could have hoped, saying the reason he kept the regime in place was that he didn’t want their entire society to fall apart like post-invasion Iraq during the George W. Bush era. Trump claimed the move made him so popular in Venezuela that, were he to run there for president, he would win too.
He then moved on to Iran, saying that moves from his first term actually set the U.S. up for victory this time around. The president told the press:
“I had killed Qasem Soleimani (late Iranian general), who was an evil genius, and the reason I did it — I heard he was going to knock out five of our military bases. And had he lived, I believe we would have been fighting perhaps a different Iran right now, because he’s never — he’s never been replaced, you know. And I also — I did one other, but this one was not picked up — Osama bin Laden.”
Trump: I had killed Soleimani… I did one other, but this one was not picked up. Osama Bin Laden pic.twitter.com/iwZsTqMewm
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 6, 2026
Fred Guttenberg took to X to write, “Um, did he just claim that he took out Osama bin Laden? Unlike him, I do not have dementia, and can say with certainty that @BarackObama did that.” Which is an understandable response, considering Trump’s recent unhinged swipes against his first predecessor.
Um, did he just claim that he took out Osama Bin Laden? Unlike him, I do not have dementia, and can say with certainty that @BarackObama did that.
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) April 6, 2026
But what Trump was talking about was his opinion that bin Laden was going to be a problem. For years, Trump has claimed that he wrote about bin Laden before 9/11, pushing the administration to “take him out.” According to Newsweek, in 2025, Trump said, “And please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, one year before he blew up the World Trade Center. And I said, ‘You got to watch Osama bin Laden.’”
Trump did indeed mention bin Laden in his 2000 book The America We Deserve when he had just started taking his presidential ambitions seriously, but he did not actually call for taking him out, merely used him as an example of inconsistent U.S. policy.
