Donald Trump just blew it
Donald Trump found himself in the midst of several new or worsening messes this weekend, and based on his tweets, he can’t seem to decide whether to blame others or pretend the messes don’t exist. He still has yet to publicly address the death of one of his residents in Trump Tower yesterday, or the revelation that he lobbied against a law that would have required him to install fire sprinklers. In contrast, he’s responded to the latest Syrian gas attack head on, if you could call this a response.
Trump went on a Twitter rant today blaming everyone from President Obama to Vladimir Putin for the gas attack. Trump always blames Obama for everything; we don’t yet know why he’s suddenly also taking a shot at Putin for the first time ever. In any case Trump is of course assigning no blame to himself. Palmer Report suggested earlier today that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad may have launched the gas attack because he felt emboldened by Trump’s recently stated desire to remove the U.S. presence from Syria entirely. Now it turns out someone else is echoing the same sentiment.
Republican Senator John McCain released this statement today: “President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria. Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children, this time in Douma.”
Of course Senator McCain seems to want the United States to engage in all-out warfare in Syria, which would be extraordinarily deadly, and is probably not winnable at any cost. But at least McCain understands that Donald Trump’s recent statements on Syria have made things worse. Remarkably, Trump insisted during the campaign that he didn’t want to discuss his supposed plan for the region because he didn’t want to tip off the enemy in advance. Now Trump has done precisely that, and the results have quickly turned tragic. Contribute to Palmer Report
