Attorney General William Barr rained on the liberal media’s parade in trying to paint President Donald Trump as an impulsive, irrational war-seeking commander-in-chief going off half-cocked to stir world passions.

Countering media claims that the president disdains expertise in making decisions, Barr said Monday that Trump consulted the Justice Department before ordering the airstrike that killed Iran’s terrorist general.

“The Department of Justice was consulted and frankly I don’t think it was a close call,” the attorney general said. “I believe the president clearly had the authority to act as he did on numerous different bases.”

Democrats and their media allies have questioned the decision to take out Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force who had the blood of over 600 Americans on his hands and reportedly had plans in the works to attack American interests.

With Speaker Nancy Pelosi leading the charge, Democrats have claimed Trump did not properly notify Congress in advance. They have also engaged in fear-mongering, stirring the nation over concerns about potential consequences of making Iran mad.

Barr said Soleimani was a “legitimate military target,” and described the airstrike as a “legitimate act of self-defense.”

A Pentagon statement released after the strike said it was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” and that the general was “actively developing plans to attack” American interests.

Democrats have worked hard to dispute this assertion, insisting there’s no evidence to support the claim.

Barr said he believed there was intelligence of an imminent attack, but added that this does not mean “there’s a requirement frankly for knowing the exact time and place of the next attack.”

In a broader scope, he also spoke of deterrence — all of which prompted the media to breathlessly report that Barr shifted justification for the strike from imminent threat to deterrence.

“I want to lay this out in context of what we’ve been trying to do. There’s a bigger strategy to this,” Barr said. “President Trump and those of us in his national security team are re-establishing deterrence, real deterrence, against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

President Trump took to social media on Monday to comment on the left’s tactic of undermining him on the attack.

“The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was ‘imminent’ or not, & was my team in agreement. The answer to both is a strong YES., but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!” the president tweeted.

The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was “imminent” or not, & was my team in agreement. The answer to both is a strong YES., but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2020

Speaking to reporters outside Air Force One later Monday,

Trump called Soleimani the “number one terrorist in the world” while speaking with reporters outside Air Force One on Monday, Fox News reported.

He said the general was “a very bad person” who “killed lots of Americans, killed a lot of people.”

“When Democrats try to defend him, it’s a disgrace to our country. They can’t do that,” the president said. “And let me tell you, it’s not working politically very well for them. We killed the number one terrorist in the world, Soleimani, and it should have been done 20 years ago.”