On Thursday evening, Donald Trump ordered an attack on sites inside of Iran (or “sights” as he declared in a series of tweets). But with planes already in the air and ships maneuvering into position for the attack, Trump told the Pentagon to stop the action before the missiles flew.
On Friday morning, Trump posted a series of tweets explaining just why he put his finger on the trigger, then eased it off again. He started by repeating his previous claims about the Iran nuclear treaty, including the usual blatant lies about President Obama presenting Iran with mountains of cash. Then Trump explained that, thanks to his violation of an international treaty and forcing of a crisis, Iran is now a broken and “bust” nation. He doesn’t explain how this bust nation is such an issue that it demands the attention of a U.S. carrier group and thousands of extra boots on the ground in the Middle East.
But then Trump tells the heroic story of how he saved lives—Iranian lives—by ordering the world’s greatest military to stand down. “We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sights,” tweeted Trump, “When I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”
There are only about a hundred million things wrong with this story. First, this shows that Donald Trump first approved an attack without bothering to ask about casualties. Second, it assumes that there’s absolutely no threat to the U.S. in taking this action, since there’s not moment’s thought given to any retaliation by Iran either against the forces carrying out the attack or against targets around the globe. And third … this whole story is almost certainly a lie.
Because every time Trump creates one of these stories where people are being so hyperrespectful of him, are throwing their arms around him, are crying or hugging or thanking him for what he’s done, it turns out to be a lie. He makes these things up with clockwork regularity, and they get repeated just as regularly, and no one ever seems to be bothered by the fact that he’s pulling them from his … badly tailored pants. Trump even lied about the time between when he stopped the attack and when it was scheduled to go off. According to reports, the actual strike was still several hours away, not “10 minutes.”
Trump seems to believe that this story makes him seem compassionate. But what it proves is that he’s thoughtless, shallow, and wholly unsuited to having his hands on the controls of the U.S. military.