Is it in his history of public statements as a private citizen? This is but one of thirteen tweets sent out after the 2013 chemical bombing of civilians in Syria.
That was said after approximately 1000 Syrians, including children and "beautiful babies,” were gassed by the Assad government in August 2013 in the besieged Eastern Ghouta, a sprawling agricultural hinterland near Damascus.
The children and babies have been dying for years from every type of weapon the Assad regime and its Russian ally could aim at them.
Last year the White Helmets were pulling their bodies out from beneath the rubble in Aleppo.
The White Helmets rescue group said at least 87 people were killed Wednesday in Aleppo province. The number is expected to rise significantly as attacks intensify and underequipped medical facilities struggle to cope.
“The planes are up above. We can’t get out,” said the children’s hospital director, who gave his name as Hatem. “We’ve been hit before, but this isn’t like the other times. Every mother is holding her child. We can’t control things anymore. The parents want to protect their children by themselves.”…
...It was at least the ninth such attack on a medical facility in opposition-held areas nationwide in three days. The United States on Tuesday condemned the previous attacks, calling them violations of international humanitarian law….
While the bombing of Aleppo was on-going, Candidate Trump could not bring himself to condemn Assad or his Russian partner for their attacks upon the Syrian people. Last year during a Presidential debate, he was asked what he thought would happen if Aleppo fell. Trump’s response combined ignorance and untruths with appeasement.
...The most shocking error Trump uttered about Syria came when Raddatz asked him what he thinks will happen if Aleppo falls to the regime?
“I think that it basically has fallen. Okay? It basically has fallen,” Trump said. Then he quickly changed the subject to wonder aloud why the Iraqi government doesn’t do a “sneak attack” to liberate Mosul, it’s second largest city.
The Assad regime and its Russian partners are bombarding eastern Aleppo each and every day in a brutal campaign to crush the opposition under siege there by terrorizing the civilian population. The U.S. government and international experts agree Syria and Russia are committing war crimes there.
For Trump to deny that any hope exists for the people of Aleppo to resist this onslaught amounts to turning a blind eye to the ongoing atrocities. It’s probably not a coincidence that Trump’s description of the situation in Syria largely tracks with the Russian government propaganda line, because Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have roughly the same worldview….
The suffering and deaths of the children of Aleppo did not matter to private citizen or candidate Trump. Apparently refraining from criticizing Russia did.
As Occupant of the White House, his policies have shown no concern for the children and “beautiful babies” of Syria.
Bana Alabed, the 7-year-old Syrian girl who became famous for live-tweeting bombings in the besieged city of Aleppo, ultimately had to flee the city in December following the bombing and destruction of her family’s home. Now with her family in Turkey, Alabed, who has in the past conversed with J.K. Rowling over Twitter and made appeals to Michelle Obama, has written a letter to President Donald Trump enjoining him to “save the children and people of Syria.”
“In Aleppo, I was in school but soon it was destroyed because of the bombing. Some of my friends died. I am very sad about them and wish they were with me because we would play together by right now. I couldn’t play in Aleppo, it was the city of death,” wrote Alabed, according to a copy of a letter sent to the BBC by her mother.
“Right now in Turkey, I can go out and enjoy,” she continued. “However, millions of Syrian children are not like me right now and suffering in different parts of Syria … You must do something for the children of Syria because they are like your children and deserve peace like you.”
According to the New York Times, Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order indefinitely blocking Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. as soon as Thursday.
nytlive.nytimes.com/…
And so he did. Barely a week into his Presidency, Trump signed an executive order banning Syrian refugees from America.
He also planned to clamp down on legal immigration in another action expected as early as Thursday. An eight-page draft of that executive order, obtained by The New York Times, would indefinitely block Syrian refugees from entering the United States and bar all refugees from the rest of the world for at least 120 days.
A week ago, the Trump administration again reiterated a hands off approach to Syria.
ISTANBUL, Turkey—Days ago, in Ankara, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled that the U.S. had no quarrel with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a man Tillerson’s predecessor compared to Adolf Hitler after he slaughtered more than 1,000 people with poison gas in 2013.
The “longer-term status of President Assad,” Tillerson said, “will be decided by the Syrian people,” a euphemism used by Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran to indicate that he isn’t going anywhere.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer used almost identical language the next day, saying, “Well, I think with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept in terms of where we are right now.”...
A few days later, Trump authorized a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Crocodile tears and chest beating had replaced indifference.
Why? Why the change now? The latest gas attack in Syria is not a new phenomena. What is so different from what has been occurring in Syria for years?
Assad’s and Russia’s attacks on Syria’s people, including multiple confirmed chemical weapons attacks that have killed approximately 1500 Syrians, including children and babies, have not mattered to Trump — until now.
Half a million people in Syria have died. Millions have fled, running for their lives. There has been systematic torture of Syrian detainees held in Assad’s prisons.
Assad’s mass killings are Syria’s ‘holocaust’
The systematic torture and killing of 11,000 detainees in Syria has been compared to the holocaust by a Scottish scientist who co-authored a report claiming the Assad regime is guilty of war crimes.
Professor Sue Black, a forensic anthropologist at Dundee University, described horrifying evidence that could see Syrian government officials face charges for murder on an industrial scale.The strangulation, beating, electrocution and starvation of thousands of young men was likened to Nazi death camps by Prof Black, one of a panel of world-renowned experts sent to the Middle East to examine thousands of smuggled Syrian government photographs taken to record the deaths.
Prof Black said the images were the most distressing she had witnessed in a 30-year forensic career that had seen her investigate war crimes in Kosovo and identify victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami...
None of it mattered to Trump. So what could have flipped the switch?
On April 6th, the New York Times published a piece about the CIA being so worried about the evidence of Russia's sabotaging of our election that during the summer of 2016, the Director of the CIA held a series of "urgent, individual briefings" with the Gang of Eight.
C.I.A. Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed
WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say.
The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews.
The former officials said that in late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C.I.A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break….
A few hours after the NYT piece was published, after years of showing no concern for the children of Syria, Trump authorized a strike on a Syrian military airport.
Suddenly we're not talking about the CIA's alarm over Russian interference, how those concerns were shut down by Mitch McConnell, or the ongoing investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. With a telegraphed missile launch, suddenly MSM is all over themselves declaring Trump “Presidential” and the NYT’s piece is forgotten.
There is nothing in Trump's history or recent policies that supports the idea of him giving a damn about Syria's children. There is plenty of evidence that says he wants the public to ignore the six law enforcement and intelligence agencies investigating his ties with Russia. Trump has repeatedly shown that he will do anything to distract the public and the media from those investigations.
From repeatedly lying about being “wiretapped “ by President Obama, to the charade that is Devin Nunes tip toeing across the White House grounds in the dark, to the Trump Administration and GOP efforts to portray Susan Rice as the true risk to national security — the Trump Administration’s attempts to distract from on-going investigations into possible collusion between Trump and Russia are pervasive.
All too often Trump’s manipulations work.
Once again MSM has swallowed the shiny object Trump dangles. Suddenly Trump is “Presidential.” Apparently firing a few dozen missiles that do not stop Assad from a damn thing, including attacking the town he had just gassed a few days ago, makes one a true Commander in Chief. I’ve seen cats chasing a laser beam across the floor who figured out reality faster than far too many pundits. Eventually the cat clues to the game. Far too many of the Punditry seem to embrace it.
That must not go unchallenged.
It is utterly obscene for Trump to use the deaths of the children this week for his own ends. But that is what he has done. There is nothing he will not use to distract from the ongoing investigations in to his ties to Russia.
Firing off some cruise missiles that took out twenty old airplanes that Russia will replace, while not touching the chemical weapons on site, is playing the ultimate distraction. Too many in the press and public are falling for it. That’s not just a journalistic failure. It’s a profound moral one — a failure that diminishes every Syrian child who has died, every Syrian parent that grieves, and every Syrian family that have run for their lives.