Though Donald Trump assured Americans that “all is well” following Iran’s retaliatory missile attack on a United States base in Iraq, U.S. Central Command last week announced that the strikes actually left 11 service members injured. Asked to explain the contradiction between his characterization and the actual events on the ground during a Tuesday press conference, the president had a totally empathetic, not at all out-of-touch answer: the troops weren’t really wounded—they “had headaches.”

“I don’t consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I’ve seen,” Trump said, explaining that he’s “seen people with no legs and no arms.” “No, I don’t consider [head trauma] to be bad injuries, no.”

The president here is referring to traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which are a pervasive problem for the military. Though concussions are perhaps the most common injury among service members, they’re often under-diagnosed and poorly understood, which can have lasting negative impacts on troops’ health. In October, Trump’s own government put $50 million toward concussion research. Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense “share an urgent, ongoing commitment to better understand the long-term impact of TBI,” VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said in a statement at the time.

Trump’s response almost certainly has less to do with his thoughts about cognitive health than with looking like a bozo for having been unaware of the injuries—or worse, lying about them—when he offered up a weirdly upbeat assessment of the attack Iran launched to avenge the killing of military leader Qassem Soleimani. “The American people should be extremely grateful and happy,” he said in a televised address the morning after Tehran’s counterpunch. “No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack.” His refusal to back down in the face of evidence to the contrary is, at this point, predictable.

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