
Rev. William Barber called out Republicans for praising Donald Trump's unilateral decision to bomb Syria on supposedly moral grounds, after they rejected President Obama's request for authority to intervene in 2013.

Rev. William Barber appeared on MSNBC's AM Joy and tackled the flip-flopping positioning of Donald Trump and Republicans in favor of bombing Syria for humanitarian goals.

Barber is behind the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina that have been a bulwark in enabling progressive change. He expanded the program as part of the resistance, pushing against Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Barber noted that Republicans now invoking moral motives for the Syria bombing "said no" to President Obama's 2013 request to intervene in Syria after the Assad regime "killed 1,500 people viciously."


Barber went on that Republicans' sudden reversal on intervening in Syria is "more about politics and cover-up than it is about really protecting lives and caring about people."

BARBER: I believe the only way we can challenge what we see with this Trumpism is not just him, is to reimagine, reengage The Poor People's Campaign and finish it like Dr. King intended it, and that's where we're headed. Poor people, poor children's campaign that will challenge the continuing realities of systemic racism, poverty, militarism, and this whole focus on national morality. When you can, I've said — people say you're being presidential when you bomb people? Now, remember, these are the same people that when Assad killed 1,500 people viciously and President Obama asked the congress to vote to go to war, they said no. This is just some kind of eerie situational ethics that's more about politics and cover-up than it is about really protecting lives and caring about people.

Republicans deserve extreme skepticism about their sudden interest in the well-being of Syrians, especially because of their continued support for Trump's extreme ban on refugees — a position Hillary Clinton recently called on Trump to reverse because, she said, "we cannot in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies, and in the next close American doors."

As Barber explains, deeds, not pabulum, give moral weight to such decisions, and Trump and his Republican enablers continue to come up short, despite talking a good game.