There were two Donald Trumps running during last year's presidential campaign.

First there was the sane Donald who tweeted things like, "We should stay the hell out of Syria, the 'rebels' are just as bad as the current regime."

And then there was the crazy Donald one who said things like, "I love war."

For the first couple months of his presidency, the sane Donald seemed to be prevailing. But as of April, the crazy Donald has been winning out. He's picking fights with Russia, Syria and Iran at the same time.

If that sounds confusing, it is. Those three countries are fighting against the Islamic State. Trump is pledged to destroy the Islamic State. Instead, he seems determined to fight both sides at once. That's a formula for endless military involvement in the Mideast.

Don't blame me. Or Pat Buchanan. Or Ann Coulter or any of us old-time or "paleo" conservatives.

Trump's transition to uber-hawk began with that decision to attack a Syrian airbase early this month.

Buchanan's reaction to what he termed the president's enlistment in "the war party" was typical:

"If, after Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, we do not want America in yet another Mideast war, the time to stop it is before the War Party has us already in it," he wrote. "That time is now."

As for Coulter, she wrote that "Trump's Syrian misadventure is immoral, violates every promise he ran on and could sink his presidency."

Meanwhile the commentators of the mainstream media rose as one to cheer Trump's action as "statesmanlike" and "presidential." One Washington Post writer went so far as to write that "Trump can make our national security policy great again."

Meanwhile the New York Times ran a glowing piece on United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley speculating that her hawkish stance on the Syria strike might make her presidential material.

Let me make a plea to my fellow members of the mainstream media:

Cut it out before someone gets hurt.

The Donald was doing miserably in the polls before that Syria strike.

He came into office apparently unaware that it is Congress, not the president, that writes the laws. He seemed genuinely shocked when the Republicans failed to enact a reform to Obamacare that was thrown together in haste.

His efforts on immigration and tax reform seemed stalled as well.

But then he fired off 59 cruise missiles and all of a sudden he was rising in the polls. TV screens were full of retired generals telling us this was a stroke of military genius second only to the D-Day landings.

Before long Trump was sending an armada off in the general direction of North Korea to accomplish some goal that even he couldn't articulate. And then last week his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, decided to open up another front by accusing the Iranians of violating that nuclear-disarmament deal - on the same day the State Department was affirming that Iran is in compliance with the treaty.

Tillerson was also accusing the Iranians of involvement in Iraq - failing to mention that their involvement consists of fighting the same Islamic State forces Trump has pledged to defeat.

A president doesn't need the approval of Congress for this sort of thing. (Unless of course he wants to comply with the Constitution; see Rand Paul video below)

That makes Trump seem strong and decisive - even though these actions are in fact weak and indecisive.

You don't win a war by fighting against both sides at once. You win a war by deciding which side you're on: The Syrian government or the Syrian rebels? The Sunni extremists of the Islamic State or the Shia forces who are determined to drive them out?

At the moment, Trump seems determined to lash out at every perceived enemy everywhere on Earth. This is the exact opposite of the "America first" policy he espoused during the campaign. But no one in the mainstream is calling him on it.

Perhaps that's because they see the "America first" position as right-wing, the sort of thing you'd hear from former Breitbart executive Steve Bannon.

They're certainly correct in that regard. And they all seemed happy when Bannon was squeezed out of his position on the National Security Council.

But according to news reports Bannon seems to have been the sole member of the Trump administration who was skeptical about that missile strike.

He may also be the sole member who can keep the crazy Donald in check.

Someone has to do it, and my fellow members of the mainstream media don't seem to be up to the task.

PLUS - MORE HOLES IN THE WHITE HOUSE REPORT ON SYRIA:

MIT scientists and weapons expert Theodore Postol has debunked virtually all the claims made in that four-page White House press release that Trump used to justify his illegal and unconstitutional attack on Syria.

Read here for Postol's latest summation of the report's flaws.

Postol goes into intricate detail on wind direction and the physics of Sarin gas dispersal to show the White House report can't be correct:

"No competent intelligence professional would have made so many false claims that are totally inconsistent with the evidence. No competent intelligence professional would have accepted the findings in the WHR analysis after reviewing the data presented herein. No competent intelligence professionals would have evaluated the crater that was tampered with in terms described in the WHR.

"Although it is impossible to know from a technical assessment to determine the reasons for such an egregiously amateurish report, it cannot be ruled out that the WHR was fabricated to conceal critical information from the Congress and the public."

Note that Postol is not offering any theories on who did what to whom that morning in Idlib. He's simply saying that the events that morning could not possibly have occurred the way the White House report said they did.

This is the sort of issue that usually would be examined in depth in the mainstream media. Perhaps Postol's work can be debunked. If so, I'd like to see some enterprising reporter try to do so.

Instead the media are circling the wagons to protect the White House report from scrutiny.

Read this piece by noted investigative reporter Robert Parry in which he lambastes the media for blindly accepting a piece of propaganda:

"All the Important People who appeared on the TV shows or who were quoted in the mainstream media trusted the images provided by Al Qaeda-related propagandists and ignored documented prior cases in which the Syrian rebels staged chemical weapons incidents to implicate the Assad government."

The fact is that no journalists from American media got to the site of the attack. Nor did any representatives of the U.S. government.

So how does the White House claim to know those photos and videos are genuine?

That's the sort of question the media should be asking.

Instead we have this piece mocking those asking the questions from the newspaper that gave us the WMD scares that led to the Iraq War.

Is the Donald so dumb that he doesn't recognize that the mere fact that the New York TImes and Washi9ngton Post supported this action means it was an awful idea?

Alas, I fear the Donald is that dumb - or that liberal.

Either way he's selling out the people who voted for him.

BELOW: See Rand Paul explain how Trump violated the constitution and ended up aiding the Islamic State: