Announcing Baghdadi’s death, Trump claimed that the ISIS leader was “whimpering” and likened him to a “dog” in his attempt to escape U.S. forces. Five senior Trump administration officials who watched in real time as the president spoke on Sunday morning each told The Daily Beast that they had no idea where the president got the “whimpering and crying and screaming” detail. Two officials recounted how after they heard that on Sunday, they immediately began messaging each other questions and comments like, “uh where is he getting that?”

The comments confused officials in the Pentagon as well, some of who told The Daily Beast that there was no way Trump could have heard Baghdadi’s voice on the Situation Room live stream Saturday night because it did not have audio. Two senior officials said while President Trump could have spoken to commandos on the ground who carried out the raid but said that has not often been the case in past operations…

Trump has made similar overstatements before. Two people close to the president say that when they heard about his comments on the “crying” late ISIS leader, it reminded them of how Trump privately, as well as publicly, enjoys reflexively insulting his enemies in situations much less weighty than an anti-Islamic State raid. “Whether they’re actually crying or not, [Trump] will very often accuse some person he’s in a fight with, like a celebrity or a politician, of being weak and just crying all over the place,” one of the sources said. “It’s a favorite insult of his.”