Apr 13, 2018

Several Democratic lawmakers upbraided President Donald Trump on Friday for using social media to telegraph potential attacks against Syria, warning that his "reckless" and "taunting" language endangers American troops.

Nine members of the House of Representatives, all of them US military veterans, urged the president to immediately halt his provocations, which included tweets this week after an apparent chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town of Douma where the British government estimates up to 75 people were killed.

"As military veterans, we are profoundly concerned about the president's reckless use of Twitter and other public forums to discuss the use of military force in Syria," Mike Thompson, Ted Lieu, Seth Moulton and others said in a joint statement.

The group acknowledged that deliberate punitive strikes against Syria should be weighed, given the horrors of an attack that the White House blames squarely on the Syrian regime.

But the lawmakers said Trump's "taunting and flippant language" must stop.