Whenever the U.S. military strikes, (mostly ordered by Republicans) the country and the media generally go a little ga-ga and feels a whiplash of emotions, which makes them say very dumb things.
And when it comes to right wing pundits, and former military analysts, anything goes.
Case in point.
On Thursday MTP Daily, Brad Todd, a Republican strategist ad maker, who partnered with Alex Castellanos, and has worked for Scott Brown, Bobby Jindal, the RNC, and Mitt Romney made some moronic claims as well as outright lies after host Chuck Todd asked about what will happen if Trump takes Sen. McCain's advice and nation builds in Syria.
Chuck said, "The politics of that seem to be very risky."
Especially since both Russia and Iran are supporting Assad.
Brad responded in Republicanese, "Look, being president is hard. Being the leader of the free world is hard. Being the beacon of freedom in the world is hard. George Bush understood that, Barack Obama shirked away from it. - we're going to find out where [Trump] is on it."
This of itself is a word salad soliloquy of nonsense to paint the former president as weak, which he was not.
President Obama was not elected to nation build in the Middle East. He asked for Congressional approval to strike at Syria after they used chemical weapons in 2013. And then they negotiated a deal with Russia to remove all of Assad's chemical weapons instead..
Brad continued with his bullsh*t, "...you have to make those kind of difficult decisions and lead the country. Sometimes you have to take the country to a place where you convince them as you do it."
In other words, fill the media with propaganda to try and sway public support of heinous actions, like say attacking Iraq?
Brad continued, "And I think that George Bush should be commended. Now we see how hard it was. We'll find out now."
WTF? We need terrorist attacks like 9/11 to show us how hard it is to be president? This is more than just moronic.
George Bush made one of the worst foreign policy decisions in our history when he helped lie America into attacking a country that didn't attack us.
The Middle East has been on fire since Dick Cheney got his way and it hasn't cooled down all that much since.
Chuck commented on how Trump felt intervening was a bad idea, but now is changing and wonders what his long term plans are.
The WSJ's Eli Stokols said since Trump is influence by pictures, he's had his eyes opened. mind.
"He does respond to pictures and images and he recognizes that and how awful this is," Eli said.
What, since Trump began campaigning he never once saw images of the destruction in Syria? Maybe they weren't on Fox and Friends. That would explain it.
Stokols replayed Trump's actions in 2013, "This is a guy who criticized Obama even though at the time he was urging Obama in tweets to not go to Syria, also to go to congress. He's basically upset with Obama now for following exactly his advice four years ago. I mean, there is a lot of mixed messages you get from Donald Trump."
Todd observed that this is a time for the war hawks like Cotton, Graham, McCain to drive a wedge between Trump and Putin.
Brad Todd came back and made the harebrained statement that since a couple of Republicans supported Obama's Syrian ask, all Republicans supported it.
Chuck said, "There was a handful, there wasn't a majority..."
Brad continued, "There was support and it came from the republican side, not the Democrat side."
Then he lied about John Kerry.
Brad said, "He didn't have his own Secretary of State on his side in 2013. Every single day with John Kerry was walking back a position on Syria..."
Chuck flew in, "No, John Kerry is upset they didn't do anything. No, he's the one that fought..."
In record breaking time, Brad Todd turned George Bush into the greatest modern leader of our time, smeared Obama lied about SOS John Kerry's Syria position.
I wonder if that broke some sort of record?
Trump was also elected on a platform of non-'nation building' as well. And didn't he also tell his rubes that he wasn't a typical Republican war monger?
But soon as Trump was inaugurated, if you polled progressives only, and the question was, 'how soon do you think Trump will drop some bombs on an enemy?'-- the answer would have been at least as high as 89% for "within the first 100 days."
We were right.
