Three days after President Trump ordered the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the liberal media were still tripping over themselves as they continued to clamor about the President supposedly starting a war (while downplaying the Iranian-backed attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq). But during NBC’s Sunday Today they took it another step, declaring Trump had started a “religious war” and insinuated it was a tactic to distract from his impeachment.

Correspondent Harry Smith was filling-in as host for the show when he asked NBC national security analyst and Obama-era CIA and Defense Department official Jeremy Bash:

The President was tweeting a lot last night saying, we've got all these targets picked up that we're ready to hit in Iran should Iran respond. To me, it almost sounds like the President is daring them to respond. What's your sense?

Off the bat, Bash insisted Trump was “framing this as a cultural war, it’s a religious war” for tweeting the military had 52 targets of importance to Iranians selected for destruction if Iran retaliated. “Now, I guarantee you, Harry, that the Pentagon does not think of this in that way,” he declared. “There’s no one list of sites. If we were to be in an all-out military conflict with Iran, there would be many more targets. But the President, in framing it as a cultural or religious war I think is inflaming tensions.”

The idea that the military didn’t have a list of high-value targets pre-selected when the U.S. and Iran had been going tit-for-tat for months was laughable. In fact, shortly before Bash made that claim, NBC political director Chuck Todd talked about how the military had given Trump options for a response to the embassy assault:

And according to our reporting, it is part of the press coverage of that response, the perception that he looked weak in doing it that may have driven the President this time to do something a bit more spectacular, a bit more high-profile, which apparently he went back to advisers and surprised some by picking a more high-profile response, which in this case was the killing of Soleimani.

At one point, Bash actually boasted about Iran’s military capabilities. But he failed to catch the irony that he was describing how they were a threat to be dealt with. “Well look, on June 20th Iran shot down a U.S. aircraft, Harry, and then on September 14th Iran used precision-guided munitions, land-attack cruise missiles and drones to attack a Saudi oil facility. So, Iran has a number of military capabilities that they've been developing,” he touted.

Towards the end of their discussion, Smith insinuated Trump’s actions were simply a tactic to distract from impeachment, quipping to Todd: “Chuck, guess what. Impeachment, no one’s talked about impeachment, what, for two or three days now?”

“Right. Well look, that is a fact, Harry. It is -- this issue of Iran is overshadowing impeachment,” Todd agreed, adding that it injected uncertainty into the process. “So, yes, this thing overshadows impeachment in a big way. And I think it only introduces more complicated politics for both parties next week.”

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: