Droves of Americans in the public and in the media have been dragging President Trump for delivering an alternative facts statement, while contrasting how he says he deals with the deaths of U.S. soldiers, with how he claimed some of his predecessors have.

“The toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens. Soldiers are killed. It’s a very difficult thing,” the President said while speaking to reporters in the Rose Garden, on Monday, October 16. “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls. A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate; hen I think I am able to do it.”

Flanked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Trump had been responding to an inquiry into how tardy he's been to put out a statement condemning an attack on four U.S. special-forces members in Niger earlier this month when he made mention of Obama to deflect from the specific question he was presented with. Three surviving U.S. Presidents have shut the sitting Commander-In-Chief's comments down since, and when later confronted about the legitimacy of his knock on Obama he took it upon himself to finally retract the statement.

“President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t," said Trump. "I don’t know. That’s what I was told. All I can do is ask my generals.”