Donald Trump was in typical form at his Ohio rally Thursday night, ranting and raving before a crowd of about 8,000 supporters about how mean the Democrats have been to him despite his many amazing accomplishments. But amid all the usual grumbling and grandiosity, there was a tidbit of information the American public — and perhaps even lawmakers — hadn’t heard before.

Speaking to a crowd in Toledo, Trump railed against a vote in the Democratically-controlled house to limit his use of military force — and defended his strike on Qassem Soleimani last week that dramatically escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. “He was looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad,” Trump claimed of the top general. “But we stopped him very quickly and we stopped him cold.” That Soleimani was plotting attacks on U.S. embassies may have been news to Democratic lawmakers, who have suggested that the president’s team had shared no such information with them in a classified briefing this week.

That, of course, raises two troubling possibilities: That Trump disclosed to his raucous rally crowd classified information he kept even from lawmakers, or he’s making stuff up as he goes along. “You have [the president's advisers] saying they can't provide this kind of information to senators in a highly classified setting, but the president is going to say that to the country,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said on MSNBC Thursday. “It just shows how they're making this up as they go. They would have presented that kind of evidence yesterday if they had it.”

The president and his team have said the strike prevented an “imminent” attack, but provided few details to support the claims — enraging even some lawmakers in his own party. “I walked into the briefing undecided,” a frustrated Republican Senator Mike Lee said in remarks to reporters Wednesday, announcing that he would support a War Powers Resolution. “I walked out of that briefing decided, specifically because of what happened in that briefing.” The president said at the White House Thursday, before his rally, that Soleimani — "a total monster" — had planned to carry out an attack on a U.S. embassy, but did not mention additional embassies or provide details to support his contention. Further, Democrats said there had been no mention of embassy plots in their classified briefing. “The Trump Administration keeps Congress & the American people in the dark under the guise of ‘classification’ & then the President throws it away — making a claim inconsistent with the meager information provided at yesterday’s Senate briefing,” Senator Richard Blumenthal tweeted Thursday.

It’s hard to know what would be worse: Trump making stuff up about a delicate international crisis in the heat of the moment at a campaign rally, or Trump divulging information to his supporters that he kept from lawmakers in a tremendous breach of congressional oversight. Either way, it’ll only exacerbate the already-large trust gap between the public and the administration over its Middle East maneuvering. But his allies, like Ohio Representative Mike Turner, continued to defend him. “It is within his purview to determine what remains classified and what does not remain classified,” he said.