US President Donald Trump has praised US military generals as being "better looking than Tom Cruise - and stronger".
The bizarre televised remark was made during a two-hour press conference following his first cabinet meeting of the year.
"I had a meeting at the Pentagon with lots of generals," he told reporters. "They were like from a movie. Better looking than Tom Cruise, and stronger. And I had more generals than I've ever seen, and we were at the bottom of this incredible room. I said, 'This is greatest room I've ever seen.'"
Mr Trump also made the strange claim that the Soviet Union was "right" to invade Afghanistan in late 1979 because "terrorists were going into Russia", which then made up a large part of the socialist republic.
"The problem is it was a tough fight. Literally they went bankrupt and went back to being called Russia again instead of the Soviet Union."
It's not clear if Mr Trump knows the Afghan fighters were funded by the US and its allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Some of the mujahedeen, as the "terrorists" were known, went on to form al-Qaeda - Osama bin Laden among them - which carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
Mr Trump went on to falsely claim he was all by himself in the White House at Christmas, "except for all the guys out on the lawn with machine guns. I was waving to them. I never saw so many guys with machine guns in my life."
Except there were numerous reports in US media about his wife Melania Trump returning to the White House for Christmas.
The US President also praised a letter he received from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as "great", and claimed if he had lost the 2016 election the US would be "having a nice, big, fat war in Asia" right now.
He falsely claimed - not for the first time - Barack and Michelle's home in Washington DC has a massive fence around it. It doesn't.
"There's a reason why politicians and wealthy people build walls around their houses and their compounds. President Obama recently built a wall around his compound, there's a reason for it and I don't blame him."
Neighbours told the Washington Post there was nothing of the sort around the Obamas' home.
And he justified the withdrawal of US troops from Syria by saying the country, torn apart by civil war, didn't have "vast wealth" and was all "sand and death".
The US government is currently in a partial shutdown, with many services closed and staff going unpaid, because lawmakers can't agree on whether to fund a wall on the border with Mexico or not.
Newshub.
