After a “deer in the headlights” response, Shanahan reportedly pinned the dumb f---ing idea on his dumb boss. (Or, as the Post put it, “he failed to articulate a substantive response—other than to re-iterate these were Trump’s instructions.”) “Shanahan did not have a good meeting,” said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Fellow Democrat Bob Menendez fumed that the Trump administration was not listening to a bipartisan opposition. “[Shanahan] got a chorus of voices that basically said, ‘This is not going to work, there is a bipartisan resolve not to let this happen, and you need to send a message back to the president that there’s a combined, unified view this is not the way to go and he should change course,’” Menendez said. “[Shanahan] basically said he got the message.”

Should the Shanahan intervention move the administration’s needle on Syria, perhaps persuading Trump to join a coalition of the willing to establish a safe zone, Graham would like it known that he had something to do with it. “After Iraq, not only would this be a mistake, this would be almost an unpardonable sin, in the sense that you know what can happen. This can risk his whole presidency,” Graham told the Post, now offering Trump the carrot. “Now, if he adjusts his policies and he does what Obama didn’t do and he holds this together, he’ll be looked at as the guy who finally got it right.”

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