Trump gave Syria attack order while eating ‘most beautiful piece of chocolate cake’

US President Donald Trump gave the order to strike Syria with dozens of cruise missiles “during dessert” with visiting Chinese leader Xi Jinping, he says in an interview.

“We had finished dinner. We’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen and President Xi was enjoying it,” Trump tells the Fox Business television network.

Given word that US warships in the Mediterranean were “locked and loaded,” Trump says the decision was made then “to do it, so the missiles were on the way.”

“And I said, ‘Mr. President, let me explain something to you’ — this was during dessert — ‘we’ve just fired 59 missiles.'”

Trump says Xi “paused for 10 seconds and then asked the interpreter to say it again. I didn’t think that was a good sign.”

But then, Trump says, Xi responded that “anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies, it’s OK…. He was OK with it. He was OK.”

Trump had been hosting Xi at his private Florida resort Mar-a-Lago on April 6. The US missiles struck a Syrian air base in retaliation for Syria’s alleged chemical attack on a rebel-held town, killing 87 civilians, many of them children.

— AFP