Donald Trump finally admits he’s been suckering his supporters on Afghanistan all along
Throughout the 2016 campaign, and in fact for a few years before he entered politics, Donald Trump consistently insisted that the only way to “win” the war in Afghanistan was to walk away before the losses got any worse. He repeated this overly simplistic premise in one tweet after another, in one debate after another. He painted his magical answer as evidence that he was smarter than either party. And now, after seven failed months in office, Trump admitted tonight that he’s been full of crap on Afghanistan all along.
On some level perhaps we consider giving Trump credit for finally admitting that he’d merely been talking out his own backside about Afghanistan all these years. For once he’s admitting he was wrong. For once he’s admitting that his usual know-nothing, know-it-all rhetoric is indeed worthless. But to credit him for this, it would have to be seen as genuine growth, which would require that he continue doing so going forward – and we all know he won’t. Tomorrow he’ll be right back to the empty arrogant bluster. But even with this one admission on Afghanistan tonight, Trump did effectively acknowledge that his own supporters and voters are total rubes.
Everyone who understands politics, whether they be Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, instantly grasped during the campaign that Donald Trump never had any idea what he was talking about. He was simply serving up one conveniently simplistic phony magical solution after another. He lied. He blustered. He made things up. None of his suggestions or proposals had any real world context or viability. None of his ideas could have ever succeeded. Most of them didn’t even count as ideas. He was merely offering the kind of simplistic rationales that make the most ignorant of people think they’re the only smart ones when it comes to that topic.
And so by admitting on live national television tonight that he’s now being forced to try to come up with an adult-world solution to the Afghanistan war, Donald Trump is admitting that he was willfully full of crap on Afghanistan all along. Of course he was full of crap on every topic he spoke about during the campaign. He was merely suckering people who didn’t have a clue about the subject at hand. They fell for it. They voted for him. Now he’s flat out admitting he suckered them. Will is still go over their heads?
