A Washington Post reporter shared a comparison of the crowds gathered for the funeral of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and for President Trump’s inauguration.
Missy Ryan, who covers the Pentagon and national security, retweeted the comparison on Monday. The original tweet has the caption: “Hard to resist not retweeting this.” While attendance at a U.S. presidential inauguration is voluntary, Iran is a theocratic regime judged to be one of the least free countries in the world, where only state-sponsored gatherings are permitted.
Trump directed U.S. forces to launch an airstrike that resulted in Soleimani’s death, citing imminent threats to harm Americans abroad on Thursday. The strike was also in retaliation for orchestrating “attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months,” according to a statement from the Pentagon.
Hard to resist not retweeting this https://t.co/psCBmVELJf
— Sanam Vakil (@SanamVakil) January 6, 2020
Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in Tehran on Monday to pay respects to the dead leader. There were chants of “down with the USA” and “death to the USA,” according to CNN. His body was taken to a ceremony in the holy city of Qom, ahead of the scheduled burial in his hometown of Kerman.
The Twitter post compared a photo of the people in the streets honoring the death of Soleimani to a photo of Trump’s inauguration in 2016. Then-press secretary Sean Spicer wrongly claimed the crowd for the president’s inauguration “was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.”
[Read more: Irish unity group mourns Qassem Soleimani: ‘May his faithful soul be at the right hand of God’]
