No good deed goes un-fucked-up. Donald Trump, American president, went to visit U.S. troops stationed in Iraq on the day after Christmas, a piece of normal presidential behavior that was heralded as Very Good Indeed. It was a nice break from the World's Most Powerful Man's other holiday festivities, which included tweeting complaints about how he was "all alone" in the White House "(poor me)" because of a government shutdown he single-handedly caused, and telling a gaggle of reporters on Christmas Day (!) that "it's a disgrace what's happening in this country, but other than that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas."

Granted, it might have been a somewhat desperate move to climb out of the political dungeon after his kamikaze shutdown—which Trump's lawyers are now attempting to use to their legal advantage—and a disastrous couple of days for the stock market that may or may not have had ties to his Treasury Secretary's spectacular own-goal of a public statement. Granted, it might have taken two years for him to make the trip, reportedly because, according to a former senior White House official, Trump was previously "afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him." (His predecessor visited troops in a war zone in his first three months in the job.) But he went, and the visit seemed to boost the troops in attendance. They even brought along MAGA gear for him to sign in a possible breach of Pentagon protocol.

Job well done. Right, Newsweek? Ah, well, nevertheless—

President Donald Trump and the White House communications team revealed that a U.S. Navy SEAL team was deployed to Iraq ... While the commander-in-chief can declassify information, usually the specific special operations unit is not revealed to the American public, especially while U.S. service members are deployed. Official photographs and videos typically blur the individual faces of special operation forces, due to the sensitive nature of their job. The president’s video posted Wednesday did not shield the faces of special operation forces. Current and former Defense Department officials told Newsweek that information concerning what units are deployed and where is almost always classified and is a violation of operational security...

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.@FLOTUS Melania and I were honored to visit our incredible troops at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.! pic.twitter.com/rDlhITDvm1 — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2018

...Trump paused to take a selfie with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Kyu Lee, who said he was the chaplain for SEAL Team Five, based out of Coronado, California. The chaplain said Trump told him: “Hey, in that case, let’s take a picture.”

After Air Force One left the Iraqi airspace, Trump posted a video to his Twitter account of his time spent with American forces during his visit to Iraq. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” plays over the video and shows the president and the first lady posing for pictures with service members that appear to be from SEAL Team Five. The special warfare operators are dressed in full battle gear and wearing night vision goggles.

Here's another one for the annals of security fuck-ups from this administration. File it alongside the six-plus senior Trump aides who used private email to conduct government business—the treasonous act for which Hillary Clinton was to be thrown in jail—and this group's tendency to shovel classified information towards aides who lack a security clearance because they failed to pass an FBI background check. What do you expect from the guy who ran a highly sensitive response to an international crisis from the Mar-a-Lago dining room, in full view of random patrons? Trump also reportedly uses an unsecured phone to make calls, leaving him open to Chinese and Russian government hackers, and has blabbed classified intel on the location of American nuclear submarines to the authoritarian president of the Philippines and on Israeli intelligence assets to Russian ambassadors in the Oval Office.

SAUL LOEB Getty Images

(Some fun trivia: Trump burned those Israeli operatives the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey. Later, he'd say on national TV he was thinking of "the Russia thing" when he canned ol' Jimmy. The morning after, he hosted the Russian ambassadors in the Oval to spill secrets and tell them he'd fired "nutjob" Comey to ease the pressure from the Russia probe.)

But wait—what's that you say? The president was not content to merely put a special operations mission at risk in his rabid thirst for self-promotion? Of course not. This presidential extravaganza would not be complete without an obvious lie, spotted by CNN:

President Donald Trump incorrectly told troops in Iraq on Wednesday that he gave them their first pay raise in more than 10 years -- a falsehood he has repeatedly told.

Speaking to troops at Al Asad Air Base during his surprise visit to Iraq, Trump told troops: "You protect us. We are always going to protect you. And you just saw that, 'cause you just got one of the biggest pay raises you've ever received. ... You haven't gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one."

Trump signs a MAGA hat for a military service member. Getty Images

In fact, military pay has increased every year for more than three decades. It was raised 2.4% in 2018 and then 2.6% in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The 2.6% pay raise is the largest in the past 9 years.

Christ almighty, this is some extreme lying. Don't try this at home. Trained professionals with a doctor's note.

In fact, this was a multidimensional fabrication:

"They had plenty of people that came up, they said, 'You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3%, we could make it 2%, we could make it 4%,'" Trump told the troops about the latest pay raise. "I said, 'No. Make it 10%. Make it more than 10%.'"

Again: the raise was 2.6 percent. Not 10. But what's a little gross fabrication when you're trying to impress the troops?

Some people have suggested Trump must surely know this is a lie, a claim which operates on the assumption he ever really considers whether something is true before he says it. The only consideration is whether saying it benefits him. This the long con that began with The Apprentice, a show which presented Donald Trump, a mob-connected hustler, as an American tycoon. There is no truth, only what you can get enough people to believe. There is no reality, only a great traveling carnival. You would think, however, that even this troupe wouldn't play Baghdad.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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