Listening to President Donald Trump's first words in an address to the country following his ordered killing Friday of Gen. Qassem Soleimani only heightens my respect for people such as Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, now facing backlash from Trump supporters for having the audacity to speak the truth. While Trump continues to try to convince the American people that “all is well,” Duckworth, a former U.S. Army colonel, reminded the reality-star-turned-president of something he has ironically greatly lost sense of: reality.
“’All is well’ [...] That's what he said as thousands of troops are readying to deploy to the Middle East, to a hotbed of anger, where wearing an American flag on your shoulder gets more dangerous by the day," Duckworth
said. The combat veteran added that our nation is careening toward "a reckless, unauthorized war" of the president's "own making, born out of his illiteracy in matters ranging from foreign policy to common sense. Donald Trump never deigned to put on the uniform of this great nation, using his father's money to buy his way out of military service when his country needed him in Vietnam.
So let me make something clear to Donald Trump: All is certainly not well when war is on the horizon, just because you wanted to look like the toughest kid on the playground," Duckworth said.
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Duckworth is referring to Trump’s antagonizing responses to Iran following the U.S. airstrike that led to intensified calls for the United States to remove about 5,000 U.S. troops from the region. In retaliation for the air raid, Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles at the Al-Asad and Erbil military bases, which are home to U.S. troops, CBS News reported.
Yet the president maintained in the first words of his address to the nation Wednesday, "As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Good morning." That doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzies, but Trump supporters seem to be a different breed. Instead of urging the president to let cooler heads prevail, they attacked Duckworth for her comments.
"She is a disgrace," @its500pm tweeted. "Ignorant comment," @aboveknowledge profoundly added to the conversation. And even more appalling than the general disrespect was a Twitter user who goes by @Sandollar89 and demonstrated she is actually buying the hype Trump is touting, tweeting: "Actually we won this round....Iran saved face with a bogus attack that did NO damage....we won cause there was NO lives lost. WIN....WIN....for both sides!!! Put it to bed now, it’s over."
If only I were a bit more naive, maybe I could believe that, but I’m still embracing reality, like Sen. Duckworth. "Just because there weren't fatalities yesterday, doesn't mean there won't be any tragedies tomorrow," the senator said.