“I’m the one who did the capturing”: Trump tries to claim credit for Kurdish victories over ISIS
One would think that in light of recent events that have already called into question the president’s mental stability, Donald Trump would at least try to exhibit a measure of level-headedness in a cabinet meeting surrounded by the very people who have the power to invoke the 25th Amendment and at least temporarily remove him from office if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Unfortunately, that level of reasonable thought process and self-control are beyond the abilities of this president, as he amply demonstrated in this morning’s cabinet meeting.
According to White House press pool reports, the cabinet meeting was akin to Trump reading aloud his Twitter posts for the last few days with Trump attacking Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and making wildly exaggerated claims about his role in the defeat of ISIS.
Voice of America White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman related some of the highlights of the meeting in his Twitter feed.
“I’m the one who did the capturing" of #ISIS prisoner, contends @POTUS. "I’m the one who knows more about it than you people or the fake pundits.”
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 21, 2019
That the president still remarkably refuses to acknowledge the electoral assistance he was given by Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election after both America’s intelligence agencies and the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed that not only did the Russians interfere in that presidential contest but that they did so to help elect Trump is an astounding case of attempting to make something come true by sheer repetition.
That Cadet Bone Spurs is delusional enough to take personal credit for capturing ISIS without ever having spent even a day in combat not only suggests that an immediate psychiatric evaluation is necessary but is a major insult to the military forces who did the actual deadly and sweaty work of beating back the caliphate, many of whom were the Kurdish troops who he cowardly abandoned with his decision to withdraw U.S. troops and allow Turkey to invade the Kurdish-controlled territories in northern Syria.
If #Turkey misbehaves then US will tariff its products and impose sanctions, @POTUS says in Cabinet meeting.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 21, 2019
Having had such tremendous success with his description of the clash between neo-Nazi hooligans and anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia as a conflict that contained “fine people on both sides,” Trump tried to apply the same formula in reverse regarding the Syrian conflict, attributing murderous behavior to both sides of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict and once again demonstrating his inability to feel empathy with anyone.
His inability to look at the world in anything other than financial terms is proven by his threat to impose tariffs and sanctions on Turkey for actions it would not have taken without his decision to abandon U.S. protection for the Kurds.
“We never gave a commitment to the Kurds,” Trump said just now in Cabinet meeting, per pool
— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) October 21, 2019
Trump is apparently using the royal “we” in this comment, meaning that he personally never made any commitment to the Kurds. Knowing Trump’s obsession with erasing any shred of legacy from the Obama presidency, it’s simple to interpret Trump’s denial of America’s commitment to our allies as one more attempt at the willful rejection of any promises made by previous administrations.
With a cabinet full of acting secretaries, lame-duck members on their way out, and committed enablers/co-conspirators of the president’s misdeeds, unfortunately, it’s unlikely that a quorum of sufficiently courageous and relatively sane cabinet members will rise to the occasion and take the actions to invoke the 25th amendment that Trump’s behavior more than justifies.
Guess we’ll just have to wait for the impeachment process to play out.
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