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Wednesday, Apr 12, 2017 4:10 PM EDT

Donald Trump recounts eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” with Xi Jinping while launching missiles “heading to Iraq”

The president spent an awful long time talking about what he was eating while ordering a bombing

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Topics: American Health Care Act, Donald Trump, Fox News, geopolitics, Maria Bartiromo, Mosul, Syria, xi jinping, , ,

Donald Trump recounts eating "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake" with Xi Jinping while launching missiles "heading to Iraq"(Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Donald Trump wants the world to know that the chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago is really amazing. He also wants you to know — incorrectly — that he bombed Iraq.

In a sit-down with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo that aired Wednesday morning, the president defended his progress in health care reform and revised his policy priorities. But much of his interview focused on two geopolitical issues: the U.S. response to the Syrian government’s April 4 chemical attack on a rebel-held northern town and the U.S. Navy armada that’s on its way to the Korean Peninsula.

“Our [military] technology, our equipment, is better than anybody by a factor of five,” Trump said. “I mean, what we have in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing. Now we’re gonna start getting it, because you know the military has been cut back and depleted so badly by the past administration and by the war in Iraq, which was another disaster. So what I said [to Xi] is ‘we’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq.’”

“Headed to Syria,” Bartiromo corrected him.

“Yes,” he replied. “Heading toward Syria.”

Bartiromo also asked the president about the reason for deploying an armada of U.S. Navy ships to the Korean Peninsula after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. at any sign of aggression.

“You never know, do you? You never know,” Trump replied. “I’m not like Obama where they talk about it, ‘in four months we’re gonna hit Mosul’ and in the meantime they [ISIS militants] get ready and like you never — so look Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve [U.S., Iraqi, Kurdish and Shi’ite militia forces] been fighting it for many months and so many more people died. I don’t want to talk about it. We are sending an armada — very powerful. We have submarines — very powerful; far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you. And we have the best military people on earth. And I will say this, he [North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un] is doing the wrong thing.”

But while the president had the opportunity to delve into important national issues, the president appeared to give more detail about eating chocolate cake with the leader of China than he did to important domestic issues, like filling hundreds of current vacancies in his administration.

“It’s been very much misreported that we failed with health care,” Trump said, referring to his American Health Care Act, which was withdrawn on March 24 because it didn’t have enough Republican support to pass. “We haven’t failed, we’re negotiating and we continue to negotiate.”

He also said health care reform must be accomplished before he can move forward on his proposals for tax reform and infrastructure development. This means key that key promises about sweeping changes he promised to make early in his administration will instead be blocked as he tried to rescue his health care reform from Freedom Caucus Republicans who opposed his bill.

More Angelo Young.

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