Serial liar Trump doesn't get the benefit of the doubt on leading us into war

[babylonsister]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/serial-liar-trump-doesnt-get-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-on-leading-us-into-war/

Serial liar Trump doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on leading us into war
Written by Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos January 5, 2020


It finally arrived. Not the New Year, rather the moment we have all been bracing for when Donald Trump would take unilateral and irrevocable military action that likely puts America on the path to another intractable war.

snip//

If it all weren’t so terrifying and consequential, it would be amusing. Apparently, every single person in Trump’s orbit is suffering from some kind of crippling brain disorder. Trump is precisely the least credible person on earth to make the case for escalating tensions with Iran because, just trust him, bad things were about to happen. Did the White House crackerjacks forget that six of Trump’s top deputies have been convicted of federal crimes, including his top campaign official, first national security adviser, close friend and confidant, and longtime personal lawyer and fixer? Did they forget his current personal lawyer is under federal investigation? Did they forget Trump just became the third U.S. president in history to be impeached and by the biggest vote margin ever—that’s how devastating the evidence was? Did they forget that lies spout from Trump’s lips like a city fire hydrant loosed in the blistering summer heat? In fact, when times are tough and the politics are dicey, you can absolutely count on Trump to lie (see: health care policy, personal taxes, hush money payments, Russian collusion, Russian interference, Putin convos, firing Mueller, North Korea denuclearization, Mexico border wall funding, Hurricane paths, tariffs/trade wars, Puerto Rico relief, the Bidens, and Ukraine, just to name a few). If Trump says it, it’s inherently suspicious, and that includes his repeated claims that he would put America first and get out of “endless war.”

Trump quite simply hasn’t earned the trust necessary to get the benefit of the doubt on anything of import. Instead of building trust with American voters, he has spent his entire tenure destroying it. As former Florida Congressman David Jolly noted on MSNBC Friday, Trump not only lies, he’s not temperamentally fit enough to be trustworthy in a moment of true national crisis.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are reportedly “relishing the optics” of Democrats’ push for a fair trial of Trump, whom Republicans have now elevated to wartime president status in their own minds. “In an interview Friday, top Trump ally Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) argued that Democrats were ‘playing politics’ with impeachment while Trump was ‘taking out a general who has American bloodstains on his hands,'” writes the Washington Post. But as New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi notes in a must-read thread, it’s “hard to decouple [Soleimani’s] killing from the impeachment saga” while pondering the question, Why now?

Americans do usually rally around a wartime president, and Trump may manage to eke out a small bump in approval ratings from his military intervention. But Trump isn’t just any president—he is an eminently untrustworthy human being. More than likely, the political trajectory of the military conflict Trump just invited upon the country will be about as atypical as everything else in his presidency. Not only have roughly half of voters repeatedly pledged to pollsters to vote against Trump in 2020, a recent Civiqs poll found that nearly a third of Trump voters said their support for Trump could change later. Wars are game changers. Perhaps some of Trump’s support will harden. But just as likely, at least some of those tepid Trump supporters who have held their nose for the orange menace because they like the economy or the look of their 401(k)s will start reconsidering whether there’s more downsides than upsides to allowing an impulsive megalomaniac free reign over the most powerful military in the world.

You can’t lie your ass off, rage against everything and everyone, toy with starting a war for reasons no one can explain, and not suffer a point or two at the ballot box—points Trump simply cannot afford to lose. That’s especially true when your incompetence leads to the betrayal of one of your biggest campaign promises—ending endless wars. Voters went to the polls in record numbers in 2018 to put a check on Trump, electing an historic number of Democrats to the House. Trump is once again reminding those voters just how imperative it will be to boot him from office once and for all in November.

[tulipsandroses]

1. The man lied about the size of his inauguration crowd, lied about a hurricane,

he lies about his golf game, why the hell should anyone trust that he would not lie about this?

I wonder if these Trump supporters who have sons, daughters, husbands and wives and other loved ones in the armed services are willing to risk their loved ones' lives based on Trump's possible lies? Especially when he campaigned on ending wars.
They know he lies and they have looked the other way. What do they think now? This is possibly a life and death matter now. Its not just about pissing off liberals. Its not just drawing circles on a map anymore and lying about crowd size.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Many people are saying Trump's made a blunder here

Shameful idiot

[griloco]

3. Except Trump could play this video at a joint meeting of Congress

And Republicans would support him...

[Stuart G]

4. Correct, Trump has lied so much that will be his name forever, "Trump The Liar"

Just like....Nixon, "I Am Not a Crook"...

[Botany]

5. So Trump based the targeted killing on information from our intel community?

But when the same intel community said that Russia was fucking with our elections
and that Trump was 100% compromised we couldn't believe them?

[UniteFightBack]

7. He has been bashing the intel community but now when it suits him they are the best in the world.nt

[Botany]

8. And this AM when asked about where was the threat Soleimani presented Pompeo could give any ...

real answers although he did say that the attack was based on solid intel.

(But he, Pompeo, did get a chance to blame Obama for "the current problems" with Iran.)

BTW it might be that Trump had the Iraqi P.M. set up Soleimani by inviting him to Iraq
to work on deescalating the situation in Iraq that was triggered by Trump's bombing of
a pro Iraqi faction the day after he (Trump) talked to Trump on the phone. Internet rumor at this point.

Link to tweet

[jpak]

6. Nope

Yup