PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has mistaken Syria for Iraq while describing the moment when America launched a missile strike against the war-torn country last Friday.

Speaking to the Fox Business network, Trump described how he informed Chinese premier Xi Jinping of the missile strike, over dessert.

“We had finished dinner. We’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen and President Xi was enjoying it,” Trump said.

“Let me explain something to you, this is during dessert,” he said of his meal with Jinping.

We’ve just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit by the way, unbelievable, from hundreds of miles away, it’s brilliant it’s genius, what we have in terms of technology no-one can come close to competing.

So I said, we’ve just launched 59 missiles, heading to Iraq.

“Heading to Syria?” the host interjects.

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“Yes, heading toward Syria. And I want you to know that,” Trump said.

Trump said that Jinping “paused for 10 seconds” which he didn’t think “was a good sign”, but then added “anybody that uses gases, that was so brutal, to do that to young children and babies, that’s ok”.

Russian meeting

Meanwhile, Trump’s secretary of state Rex Tillerson has been meeting with Vladimir Putin this afternoon, amid heightened tensions between Russia and the US over Assad’s chemical attack.

Despite initial hopes in Moscow of better ties with the US under Trump, the two powers have descended into a furious war of words over the incident and the retaliatory US strike against the forces of Assad.

Russia has slammed Washington’s attack on a Syrian airbase and, as Tillerson first met Russian foreign minister Lavrov for a “frank exchange of views”, Putin admitted that relations have worsened in the three months that Trump has been in office.

“You can say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military side, has not improved but most likely worsened,” Putin said in the transcript of an interview with Mir television released by the Kremlin.

Where is the proof that Syrian troops used chemical weapons? There isn’t any. But there was a violation of international law. That is an obvious fact.

With © – AFP, 2017

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