The push to legitimize The Talking Yam marches on, helped along by networks like CNN. They're just one of the many news outlets who provide a forum for right-wing lunatics like Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) to sing the praises of candidate Trump.
Hoekstra has a list of many awful stances over the years, and he's not showing any signs of changing for the better. He is continuing the practice of Monday morning quarterbacking with regards to our foreign policy decisions during the Obama Administration. Hoekstra is defending Trump's latest attacks against Clinton, even though Trump said he would have done the EXACT same thing she did.
HOEKSTRA: Plus, we made major strategic errors, getting rid of Gadhafi, going into Syria, which both of those countries are now failed states. They joined Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan as being failed states. And so, no, there's a lot of mistakes that have been made over the last number of years.
(CROSSTALK)
HOEKSTRA: A President Trump understands those mistakes.
BOLDUAN: -- he supported that military intervention.
HOEKSTRA: Which military intervention?
BOLDUAN: Both in Iraq and Libya.
HOEKSTRA: The -- it's clear that we would be much better off if -- if Gadhafi had stayed in power, or if we had gone in and had overthrown Gadhafi, and President Obama has admitted, we didn't have a plan for what happened the day after Gadhafi left, so whether
If only Clinton and Obama had the same crystal ball that Hoekstra had to see the future, we'd all be prophetic like Hoekstra. Thank goodness CNN featured a voice of sanity within the segment, to combat the Michigan Teabagger. Lt. General Mark Hertling speaks the truth about the erratic, inconsistent foreign policy opinions expressed by Trump and his sycophants.
HERTLING: I'm very confused because, frankly, over the last 12 months or so, I've been taking meticulous notes on the things Mr. Trump has said, and he has shifted his position so many times from the military perspective I don't know what he wants to do. Now, listening to Congressman Hoekstra, I feel the same way, I'm very confused.
Mr. Trump started off by saying he would bomb the oil fields and encircle them with troops. Then he said he would bomb all the terrorist safe havens. Then he said he would torture. Then he said I know more than the generals do. Then he said I don't have to ask for advice because I know it all. Now he's saying I'm going to take some advice from the generals. So I'm very confused.
You're not alone, Lt. General Hertling, we are all certain only of the fact that Trump is seriously insane. John Berman asks him specifics about Libya.
BERMAN: General, though, what about the criticism you hear from Trump and others that Libya, whether or not Donald Trump supported the policy to go in, which he did, but after the fact, there was no plan to deal with what happened in Libya? What about the criticism we've heard about Iraq, that the United States pulled out too quickly and, again, without a plan to keep that country stable and that allowed ISIS to rise up, what about that criticism, General?
HERTLING: Yeah, all that criticism, some of it is founded, John, some of it is not. But it's not something that can be addressed in a three or four-minute conversation on CNN. But truthfully, mistakes are often made in political engagement and in combat engagement. That's why there's got to be clarification from the very beginning, and the secret plans and no one knowing what we're going to do next is not beneficial in order of getting to the real problems. So, yes, there were some issues in Libya, but I'd remind everyone that it wasn't the United States that was leading the way in Libya. It was members of our NATO alliance that wanted Gadhafi out and we contributed to that. And, yes, it may not have been thought out completely in terms of what the end state was going to be. There are indications of what might occur and what could occur. Some of those things did not occur. And it caused a little bit of a government morass. So all those things are certainly up for discussions. But to put these all in very simplistic solutions is contrary to what human engagement and conflict is all about.
Hoekstra buys into the evidence-free claim that Clinton and Obama do not listen to intelligence briefings, because Trump lied and said so.
HOEKSTRA: if President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton had listened to their intelligence briefings, they would have recognized the people they were partnering with in Libya were linked with radical jihadist groups. And I can tell you, Donald Trump recognizes that radical jihadist groups, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, are a threat to the United States, and they are not a group -- and these are not the type of ideology we can partner with to bring stability and security to the Middle East and in Northern Africa.
John Berman mercifully gave Hertling the time to refute Hoekstra's lies.
HERTLING: I'm deeply confused by the thing Mr. Trump is saying. I'm even more confused by the things now that Congressman Hoekstra is saying. He's a member of the intelligence community. He knows you can't go backwards in terms of saying, tomorrow, what you would have done yesterday. These are all things -- there's a great deal of conjecture in some of the things the congressman is saying. It's nice to be a Monday morning quarterback but sometimes you don' get that opportunity even when you have the intelligence briefings. The congressman was in Congress at the time. Why didn't he stop all this?
For Pete's sake, why didn't Hoekstra stop this? Likely because he was, at the time, unaware of the events and didn't care until he could use them against Hillary Clinton.