You can smell the fear on this guy
When Donald Trump’s dust-up with Iran first began, we saw the resurgence of the nonsensical narrative which said that Trump wanted to go to war so he could win reelection. Of course this is total crap on too many levels to count, yet it just keeps getting repeated, right up until the moment that it’s yet again proven wrong. Now would be a good time to talk about what’s actually going on here.
If Donald Trump’s behavior over the past few years has consistently shown us one thing, it’s that he’s more afraid of war than any modern president. It’s not that he’s opposed to war; he’s afraid of war. One theory is that he knows war can only serve to make an unpopular president even more unpopular, and he understands that he’s already too unpopular to begin with. Another theory is that Trump just doesn’t want the hard work of being a wartime president. Take your pick. But the bottom line is that Trump is afraid of war, you can smell the fear.
In fact the whole world can smell the fear of war on him. It’s why Iran knew it could fire a bunch of huge missiles into a military base housing U.S. troops last night, and so long as the missiles didn’t actually hit any U.S. troops, Trump would respond today by taking a pass. It’s why Kim Jong-Un has been able to push Trump around for three years, knowing full well that Trump was never going to launch any sort of military offensive. It’s why a lot of shady regimes have gotten away with a lot of shady things since Trump took office.
It’s a good thing when a president is opposed to war. President Obama was opposed to war, which is why he didn’t start any wars – but he took military action when he knew it was necessary. Donald Trump is afraid of war, to the point that he was willing to humiliate himself today by announcing that he has no response to Iran’s aggression. It’s part of why the world is walking all over Trump.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report