Hours after suggesting that "something should happen" in Syria, because "[Assad is] there, and I guess he's running things," President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike against a Syrian government military base from whence Tuesday's chemical weapons attack against Syrian civilians allegedly originated.
Donald Trump is a real president now.
"The Trump administration can truly be said to have started only now," Elliot Abrams writes in The Weekly Standard. "The president has been chief executive since January 20, but this week he acted also as Commander in Chief. And more: He finally accepted the role of Leader of the Free World." The New York Post's Ralph Peters concurs. "Incontestably, our president became...presidential." "Well done!"
CNN's Fareed Zakaria, a different person with a separate brain, agrees. "What changed last night?" CNN's Alisyn Camerota asked him this morning. "I think Donald Trump became President of the United States," Zakaria replied.
MSNBC's Brian Williams, meanwhile, is not so much in love with Trump's speedy abandonment of non-intervention in Syria as he is with the bombs themselves: "I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: 'I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.'"
As Alex Pareene noted after Trump's inaugural address to Congress, this kind of praise is not just gross, but dangerous. Trump follows applause like a cat after a laser pointer, and the first bit of bipartisan recognition he received came in response to a raid that got Americans (and foreign civilians) killed. You think he didn't watch his shows this morning? Didn't see anchors across every network applauding his presidential behavior? If he was ambivalent yesterday, I imagine he's far less so today.
Seems to me that Bannon, even with all of his bombastic rhetoric was the voice of reason in the Trump team.
Bannon's removal at the NSC on the same day that Trump upped his rhetoric for war with Assad isn't a coincidence. Bannon has been an anti war advocate and wanted America out of the Middle East. Now here we are, being led down a ruinous road by 35 year old Jared Kushner and Trump's generals, positioning for conflict in Syria over a chemical weapons attack.
In regard to the chemical attack that has left dozens dead, many of whom were children, no one knows with certainty who was responsible. There is so much fuckery going on there, you'll drive yourself mad trying to figure it out.
From what I understand - Kushner was a registered Democrat up until the time Trump began his run for POTUS and is now apparently in charge of National Security.
It appears that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the publisher of the New York Observer and someone who is aligned with the Likud Party of Israel, is now the de facto chair of the Trump transition team, especially when it comes to national security matters.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the official chairman of the team, is concentrating on domestic policy appointments, such as the rumored appointment of Texas Senator Ted Cruz as Attorney General.
Kushner fired Christie and Christie loyalist, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, from the transition team and replaced them with the discredited neocon Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy.
It is likely that Gaffney will seek to bring a host of neocons who championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq into the Trump administration.
