Take my word he's a madman, don't you know by @BloggersRUs

Take my word he's a madman, don't you know

by Tom Sullivan

Unverified cell phone video from Iran's Fars news of missiles landing on the al-Asad air base in Iraq.

As of this writing, it is still unclear if the retaliatory barrage of missile Iranians launched last night at U.S. bases in Iraq resulted in casualties. The Guardian reports Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Iraq's prime minister, had warning of the strikes from Tehran and passed on that warning to U.S. and Iraqi troops. He was advised the Iranians' retaliation for Trump's assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani would be limited. The Guardian's Michael Safi reports that Iran's warning adds "to sense this morning’s attacks were a piece of elaborate theatre."

To be continued

“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me,” candidate Donald Trump bragged in November 2015. "[T]hey don't know much, because they're not winning," he told CBS News in June 2016. He knows more about anything than anybody. Believe me.

Trump's critics have used "The Emperor’s New Clothes" analogy since before Trump took office. (It's a fair guess his wealthy parents never read little Donny the Hans Christian Andersen tale.) Media critics have asked when the press would stop covering the 15,000 Lies Man like a normal president and stop branding his actions unorthodox or chalking up his erratic behavior to a matter of style.

Hillary Clinton warned during the 2016 campaign that Trump is “temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.” She warned, "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons." And here we are in 2020, missiles flying.

In the wake of the Trumpian drone-slaying of Suleimani, the media offered "detailed descriptions of the president’s decision-making process" as if there was one, Jamelle Bouie laments in the New York Times. Bouie has had his fill of attempts "to turn away from the reality of what he is for fear of what it means," adding:

This is reckless but it isn’t shocking. Trump is not a steady hand. He’s never been one. Three years in office have neither changed his character nor enhanced his capabilities. He is as ignorant and incurious as a president as he was as a candidate (and as a would-be mogul before that). His main goal is self-preservation, and he’ll sacrifice anything to achieve it. His current assault on the authority of Congress — his refusal to have the White House or members of his administration release documents or obey subpoenas — is an attempt to escape responsibility for his own unethical (and potentially illegal) actions. He is self-involved, unethical and unstable — a dangerous combination to have for the commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military forces, under pressure from impeachment and a re-election campaign.