'I suspect it's a lie': MSNBC's Morning Joe calls BS on Trump administration justifications for Suleimani killing

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out the Trump administration's after-the-fact justification for assassinating Iranian general Qassim Suleimani.

The "Morning Joe" host said he's not buying the administration's claims that Sueleimani was plotting an imminent attack against U.S. interests, and he said lawmakers and the media shouldn't either until some evidence of that was put forth.

"They justify the attack, at first, by saying, there's an imminent threat," Scarborough said. "Why do that? Well, if the threat's imminent you've got to move immediately on Suleimani. You don't have time to talk to Congress, you don't have time to talk to anybody, you don't have time to plot it out. We've got him, we've got to kill him -- that's been their justification."

But those claims started falling apart within two days of the airstrike, he said.

"Starting Sunday the rollback of this imminent threat, the lie -- I suspect it's a lie -- that he had plans to immediately go out and kill other Americans, and now, I mean, if it is the case, okay," Scarborough said. "Let's see the evidence. But the only thing the secretary of state and all of Trump apologists have said, people inside the Trump administration has said, editorial pages that slavishly bow down to Donald Trump, they've all said, 'Well, no, it doesn't matter. Those Democrats, why are they taking Donald Trump at his own word? Why are they asking if it was an imminent threat. It doesn't matter, this man was a danger.'"

Scarborough said the administration still hasn't made the case for killing a high-ranking foreign government official.

"Yes, Suleimani was a danger to American troops everywhere," he said. "Kim Jong-un is also a threat to America. Is he next on Donald Trump's kill list? What about (Bashar al-)Assad? Assad's killed more Arabs than other leader in history other than Saddam Hussein. Is he next on the kill list? I mean, Saddam Hussein was on our kill list, wasn't he? And killing him, how much peace has that brought to the Middle East?"

"They can't have it both ways," Scarborough added. "Can't on one hand say we had to do this right away without conferring with Congress, other than a presidential tweet. 'The threat was imminent, we had to kill him right away,' and now doing nothing but roll back, one after another, saying, 'Doesn't matter whether it was imminent or not. Come on, this guy was a bad guy -- he should have killed him when we had the chance.'"

"Doesn't make any sense," he concluded.