(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump mocked Democrats for their criticism that he should have notified Congress before killing a top Iranian general, a strike that’s raised tensions in the Middle East.

“We got a call, we heard where he was, we knew the way he was getting there and we had to make a decision,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday night. “We didn’t have time to call up Nancy, who is not operating with a full deck,” he said, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The White House didn’t officially notify Congress of the Jan. 2 strike on Qessam Soleimani in Baghdad until after it occurred, angering many Democratic lawmakers who said Trump should have asked for authorization to attack a commander of another nation’s military.

On Wednesday, two Republican senators -- Utah’s Mike Lee and Kentucky’s Rand Paul -- criticized the administration’s classified briefing on the strike, complaining they learned little about the intelligence Trump said supported his decision to order Soleimani’s killing.

Trump’s Toledo rally was his first since the Soleimani strike and Tehran’s retaliatory missile attack on two Iraqi bases where American forces are stationed. There were no casualties, allowing Trump to step back from threats to strike dozens of targets within Iran.

“The last administration was leading the world to the path of war,” Trump told his Toledo audience. “We are restoring our world to the path of peace.”

He said the military was “ready to go” in a counterattack on Iran, had there been casualties from the missile barrage.

“Not that I wanted to. But we were ready,” he added. “You have no idea. A lot of people got very lucky.”

Insulting Schiff

As he ridiculed the idea of notifying Congress before military action, Trump singled out House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, who conducted the impeachment inquiry of Trump’s effort to force Ukraine’s government to investigate his political rivals.

“Now they want us to call -- can you imagine, calling crooked Adam Schiff, he’s so crooked,” Trump said in Toledo. “We have the world’s number one terrorist, killed thousands and thousands of people. We’d like to set up a meeting so we can discuss his execution.”

“We’ve got him lined up, Adam. You little pencil neck. Nine inches,” Trump said. “He buys the smallest t-shirt collar you can get, and it’s loose.”

Trump said Schiff would have leaked the strike ahead of time to news media, imitating the lawmaker speaking to a reporter. “Off the record, they’ve got the number one terrorist in the world, Soleimani, and they’re going to get him, they’re going to take him out in the next 10 minutes,” Trump said.

“They want us to tell them so they can leak it to their friends in the corrupt media,” Trump said.

Public Disapproval

The president’s supporters have stood by his decision to kill Soleimani. But the political impact of the strike may be most telling among independent voters -- a crucial bloc for his 2020 re-election hopes in swing states such as Ohio.

About 48% of independents had a negative response to the president’s handling of Iran while roughly 36% answered positively, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted after the Soleimani strike. And overall, a majority of Americans – 53% – disapproved of Trump’s handling of Iran following the strike, an increase of 9 percentage points from December.

His campaign has sought to buoy support for the president with political advertisements hailing the strike to kill Soleimani as a decisive foreign policy victory. According to ad buying data published by Facebook Inc., the president’s campaign has purchased about 1,300 advertisements praising Trump’s “swift actions” in killing Soleimani and asking for donations to the campaign.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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