President Donald Trump said the United States will not go “into Syria,” implying he has no intention of declaring a full-scale war against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad after attacking a Syrian base on Thursday.

“We are not going into Syria. But when I see people using horrible, horrible chemical weapons which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it…” the president said in an interview scheduled to air in full during the Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria on Wednesday morning.

“They said they got rid of them,” host Maria Bartiromo interjected.

“Hey, look. What I did should have been done by the Obama Administration a long time before I did it,” Trump responded. “And you would’ve had a much better — I think Syria would be a lot better off right now than it has been.”

The attack on Thursday was a seeming about-face: before he was president, Trump urged President Barack Obama not attack the country

Trump ordered the missile strike on the Shayrat air base on April 6 in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed more than 70 people in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun.

“It is in this vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” the president said in a news conference after the strike on Syria.

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