Well, then, this is a completely different perspective on that whole thing. He may not have done this rampant stupidity completely on his own. It’s hard to imagine with the way he is now (and then), which seems to be that he’s all about himself and all about making his own decisions. His cabinet doesn’t seem to have the chops to influence his thinking, except possibly Susie Wiles.
Yes, she works for him, blah, blah, blah, but she helped him run a fairly good campaign, and that’s definitely NOT an easy thing to do. But we can’t say Susie or Hegseth pushed him into a war, although Hegseth *may* have had something to do with it, one or two straws on the camel’s back. This is more than that. With appreciation to Raw Story:
President Donald Trump has reached record-low approval ratings amid his wildly unpopular war against Iran, and according to a prominent insider and former ally of his, the president “knew” launching the conflict would be “the end of his presidency” – but was compelled to move forward “against his will.”
On Saturday, The New York Times published a lengthy interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, long a fierce ally to Trump who has since broken with the president over his decision to attack Iran, going as far as to issue an apology for stumping for Trump in the lead up to the 2024 election.
What huh? Forced into something that would completely screw his presidency? That *really* doesn’t sound like him. Dementia brain or not, this certainly doesn’t seem like something that Trump would do. He’s been all about the economy, forced into the Epstein files release, his great numbers, and more. Why would he risk worse ones?
The “war with Iran” has absolutely clobbered him. He’s at the lowest numbers for both terms. He knows the American public is unhappy with him and the things he’s done here, and nearly enraged about the war.
Citing his numerous one-on-one conversations with Trump, Carlson revealed during the interview his read on the president’s mindset at the time.
“My strong read was that he was doing this against his will. This was not a normal decision-making process, and my strong impression was that Trump was more a hostage than a sovereign decision maker in this,” Carlson told the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
“He knew – and I know he knew because I talked to him about it directly – that the potential consequences were profoundly bad; the end of his presidency to start, which I think has proven to be.
He knew that!
I don’t want to overstate my knowledge, but this is my strong perception on the basis of many conversations on this topic: he felt he had no choice, and he said to me ‘everything’s gonna be okay.’”
Whoa. Everything is gonna be okay. But it isn’t, and it won’t. It was not just a poor decision; it was a horrible one, considering where we are right now. We’ve lost servicepeople, more or less all of our bases in the Middle East, and a whole lot of specialty armament, which is going to take literally years to replace. This is not okay.
As to who or what had compelled the president to launch the war against Iran, Carlson strongly suggested it to be the Israeli government and its American supporters, citing Joe Kent, formerly the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned from his position in protest and alleged that Trump was manipulated by Israel into launching the conflict.
Reporting from Bloomberg supports the idea that “outside allies” exerted significant “pressure” on Trump to launch the war against Iran, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Carlson has previously floated the idea that Israel – which has pressed for the United States to attack Iran since at least the 1990s – was exerting significant pressure on Trump to launch the war, going as far as to suggest Trump may be the victim of a “blackmail ” operation, citing claims from political writer Daniel Halper regarding Israel and former President Bill Clinton.
Well, okay then! Israel pushed him into it? Trump and Netanyahu have been close for a long time. We could guess that he has exerted pressure on Trump. That’s possible. We had better armament. What’s the point, though? If it were regime change, it was poorly executed. All that’s happened is to put a new regime in place that’s even worse than the previous one. We’ve killed a lot of people and done some damage. We’ve wasted a lot of munitions.
What does Netanyahu get from this? A distraction while he goes after Lebanon? Israel was hitting them pretty heavily. But hasn’t that “war” between those countries been going on for quite a while? An ongoing war keeps him out of court, avoiding the corruption charges. Other than that, and how hard he’s been hitting Gaza, what *does* he get from this?
See you soon!
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