Amid the daily onslaught of national embarrassments and world-historical horrors, do not lose sight of the fact that the current administration has brought us perilously close to a war with Iran, a country of 83 million people boasting a large and highly trained military force. In addition to being morally unconscionable, it would make Iraq look small time. The indications are this is less the brainchild of Donald Trump, American president, than it is a brainworm of John Bolton, his bloodthirsty warmonger of a National Security Adviser. (It might also be a prerogative for Trump's new friends in Saudi Arabia or Israel, too.) But our dear leader is not particularly known for his judgment or his restraint, and armed conflict with one of the Middle East's major powers has at times seemed very possible indeed over the last few weeks.

There was, first and foremost, a New York Times report detailing how Trump's acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan—a 30-year veteran of defense contractor Boeing with minimal military or diplomatic experience—had drawn up plans to deploy 120,000 American troops to the Mideast at Bolton's urging. On the back of that, the president was asked whether the United States would go to war with Iran, and the world's most powerful man replied, "Hope not." You love to see that kind of Very Presidential Leadership. And then, Sunday, there was The Tweet.

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If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2019

Ah! Very cool. Needless to say, this is not the standard way to conduct high-stakes diplomacy. That's particularly true considering it was the United States that violated the Iran Deal by essentially shredding the agreement even though the indications were that Iran was complying with its terms. (Trump ran as the negation of the first black presidency, so anything Barack Obama did had to go, regardless of the merits.) We are in a perilous spot with Iran because we abandoned an agreement brokered with the help of a coalition of the world's major powers, an agreement which had gone some way towards keeping the peace.

Also, just going to leave this throwback message from President Projection here.

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In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2011

The situation gets somewhat worse, however, when you factor in what appears to have given Donald Trump the idea for this more recent Presidential Message.

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Folks, The president is threatening Iran because of a Fox News segment.



Left, Fox, 4:16 pm

Right, Trump, 4:25 pm pic.twitter.com/h0lSFp2pn0 — Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 19, 2019

Good God. As Matthew Gertz went on to show in subsequent tweets, the president's activity on the Tweet Machine Sunday afternoon was directly correlated with this Fox News show. When they talked on-screen about a report that Border Patrol could transfer some migrants captured at the border to facilities in Florida, Trump tweeted about the same—and tagged @FoxNews. When the discussion turned to the threat of "Iran proxies" attacking U.S. troops in Iraq or supposed Revolutionary Guard threats against U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf, the president reacted to that, too.

The President of the United States is vacillating wildly between war and peace based on segments from his favorite teevee channel. This is also, after all, the home of Fox & Friends, where, after we learned the Rogue Tycoon President With Businessman Skills lost $1 billion of other people's money making bad Business Deals, host Ainsley Earhardt said that, "If anything, you read this and you're like 'Wow, it's pretty impressive, all the things that he's done in his life.' It's beyond what most of us could ever achieve." True that. The weekend edition is a whole 'nother story, featuring a co-host who proudly declared he hasn't washed his hands in a decade because "germs are not a real thing." Pete Hegseth later said this was a joke, somewhat like the fact that Trump was reportedly considering him to run the Department of Veterans Affairs.

This ain't all a laugh riot, however. This is how the president's favorite teevee show processed the news that he plans to pardon a bunch of accused war criminals to mark Memorial Day.

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Fox News hosts: Trump’s move to pardon convicted and accused U.S. war criminals is "amazing" and will unite the country out of “a love of our military” pic.twitter.com/VVr8eZAy4c — Media Matters (@mmfa) May 19, 2019

"First of all, I can't stand that headline, 'accused of war crimes,'" said No Germs Hegseth. "These are men who went into the most dangerous places on Earth with a job to defend us and make tough calls on a moment's notice. They're not war criminals, they're warriors."

OK, so first of all, "warrior" and "war criminal" are not mutually exclusive. While the vast majority of servicemembers obey the rules of engagement and serve honorably, it's hard to see how you could become a war criminal without being a warrior. And here is what, according to The New York Times, one of these warriors is accused of. Do these seem like tough calls on a moment's notice?

Stabbing a defenseless teenage captive to death. Picking off a school-age girl and an old man from a sniper’s roost. Indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine-gun fire. Navy SEAL commandos from Team 7’s Alpha Platoon said they had seen their highly decorated platoon chief commit shocking acts in Iraq. And they had spoken up, repeatedly. But their frustration grew as months passed and they saw no sign of official action...

[Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher] would order them to take what seemed to be needless risks, and to fire rockets at houses for no apparent reason, they said. He routinely parked an armored truck on a Tigris River bridge and emptied the truck’s heavy machine gun into neighborhoods on the other side with no discernible targets, according to one senior SEAL. Chief Gallagher’s job was to plan and oversee missions for the platoon, but platoon members said he spent much of his time in a hidden perch with a sniper rifle, firing three or four times as often as other platoon snipers. They said he boasted about the number of people he had killed, including women.

Two SEAL snipers told investigators that one day, from his sniper nest, Chief Gallagher shot a girl in a flower-print hijab who was walking with other girls on the riverbank. One of those snipers said he watched through his scope as she dropped, clutching her stomach, and the other girls dragged her away...

On the morning of May 4, 2017, Iraqi troops brought in an Islamic State fighter who had been wounded in the leg in battle, SEALs told investigators, and Chief Gallagher responded over the radio with words to the effect of “he’s mine.” The SEALs estimated that the captive was about 15 years old. A video clip shows the youth struggling to speak, but SEAL medics told investigators that his wounds had not appeared life-threatening.

A medic was treating the youth on the ground when Chief Gallagher walked up without a word and stabbed the wounded teenager several times in the neck and once in the chest with his hunting knife, killing him, two SEAL witnesses said.

These SEALs risked their careers to report a man who now stands accused of what essentially amounts to serial killings. Their reward for that is to have their reputations dragged through the mud on conservative media and, it increasingly appears, to have their work undone by a lawless president whose brain is rotting from cable television.

Because when Fox & Friends endorses something, the President of the United States does, too. The faces on his television are the president's informal—or even formal—advisers. They are his dear friends. He trusts the television more than the grifters and sycophants who would agree to serve in his White House. In this case, his television friends will hold his hand as he essentially writes a blank check for war crimes by American military personnel—and destroys any incentive that servicemembers have to report bad actors in their ranks. What's the point if the president will just pardon the guy anyway? After all, Gallagher has not even gone to trial yet. The president, by pardoning him, would assert that it doesn't really matter either way whether he killed Those People.

And that's the moral abomination at the heart of this Symbiosis of Stupid between the president and The Fox News Channel. The braindead ideas flow back and forth seamlessly, and all the while the president is decimating the infrastructure of our democratic republic—the rule of law, an independent judicial system, a free press, the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution—until there is nothing left but power and those who wield it. In that environment, when it is too late to salvage anything that redeems this nation despite all the worst things it has done to its own citizens and the outside world, he will thrive. Will the rest of us? We are running out of time to have any say in the matter.



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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