President Donald Trump speaking to the press. (The White House)

One thing I’ve learned from writing about President Donald Trump is he’s very easy to figure out. Whenever he gets in trouble, his go-to move is to create an even bigger scandal to deflect from the current scandal. And that’s exactly what he did with the recent Iran standoff.

The recent crisis with Iran could have kick-started World War III — but it did get the media to stop talking about Trump’s impeachment. Trump is a creature of the media, he’s been involved with manipulating the media for close to 50 years. This is his element. Trump is not really a businessman (he lost a billion dollars) and he really doesn’t want to be president. To him, the presidency is just a chance to increase his brand marketability and direct more money into his pockets. (Funny how someone who calls himself a billionaire, is constantly scrounging for money?)

As “Background Briefing” host Ian Masters stated the last thing Trump wanted was to actually prosecute a war and go through the daily briefings, read the casualty reports and sign letters to bereaved parents. According to BuzzFeed, Trump made the decision to de-escalate the situation after watching a report from FOX News Neo-Nazi Tucker Carlson, who had a brief moment of clarity and urged the president to avoid another costly foreign war. But don’t give Carlson too much credit, within days he was back to screaming about abolishing birthright citizenship and the “invasion,” which is a white supremacist talking point.

Also, Trump was never really serious about attacking Iran, even though the war hawks on the right were egging him on. Trump only assigned about 3,500 additional troops to the area. Meanwhile, Iran has a 500,000 man standing army. According to a Salon interview, Lt. Col. (rtd.) Lawrence Wilkerson said the Pentagon’s Iran invasion plans called for 5000,000 personnel, a 10-year commitment and would cost a trillion dollars!

Iran was just a useful tool to distract the media and the American public’s attention away from Trump’s impeachment quagmire. And it worked, for a few days, news headlines and social media were full of stories about Iran and World War III. People briefly forgot that Trump is still facing a trial in the Senate. And, if he continues to brazenly break the law, he could face additional impeachment charges.

Trump’s latest media stunt also cost the life of American serviceman Specialist Henry Mayfield Jr. who was killed in a reprisal attack from Somalian militant group Al-Shabaab. Also, several million dollars were spent moving American forces to the Middle East (putting them in danger,) Iraq threatened to kick out American soldiers and Iran is likely to speed up its nuclear program. Oh and he terrified the entire world, too.

In true Trumpian fashion, the president declared victory and bragged about his brilliant diplomacy. But in a scathing New York Time column Nicholas Kristoff says Trump has made the world less safe.

“The world is more dangerous than it was a week ago, and President Trump’s exuberance suggests that he may have learned precisely the wrong lesson from his clash with Iran,” said Kristoff.

But Trump got what he wanted, a brief respite from his impeachment woes. Since Trump is a sociopath, this behavior shouldn’t be surprising. All he cares about is getting what he wants, and he doesn’t care about who he hurts to get it. Trump doesn’t make decisions to benefit the nation, he makes decisions to benefit himself.

When the Pentagon gave him a list of options on how to deal with Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, assassination was the most extreme choice. Pentagon officials added it because they thought it was the least likely scenario. If Trump had wanted Suleimani eliminated there are several other ways he could have done it and still maintained plausible deniability.

But Trump did it anyway because it made him look tough and gave him a new media narrative. And at the end of the day, that’s all he cares about.