Trump never meant a word he said

The list of reasons for the president’s illegal and unjustified war against Iran keeps growing. First, it was because Iran had nuclear weapons. (It didn’t.) Then it was because the Iranian people longed for democracy and human rights. Then it was because Iran is a leader in state-sponsored terrorism. Now it’s because of America’s obligation as “a free people” to liberate the oppressed.

But Donald Trump doesn’t mean a word of what he says about his reasons for attacking Iran without the consent of the Congress, because he is a man who never means a word he says. He will say virtually anything to achieve his objectives, no matter how petty or consequential those objectives may be, and if achieving them requires him to contradict previous statements, so be it.

In 2011, Trump famously accused President Barack Obama, who was struggling in the polls, of planning to “start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective so the only way he figures that he’s going to get reelected, and as sure as you’re sitting there, is to start a war with Iran.” In saying this, he appeared to believe that a president who starts a war to protect power is a cheat and a criminal.

He did not mean a word of it, unless he meant that it’s bad when a Democratic president does it but okie-dokie when he does. Either way, that allegation was levied in bad faith in order to deceive – to make Americans believe, in 2011, that Trump cared about things like principles and morality when principles and morality have always been mere tools for achieving his goals.

That Trump does not believe anything he says is illustrated moreover by the fact that he’s been calling individual reporters to determine which war rationales sound best in persuading a skeptical public. One in four say they support war with Iran, Reuters said today. According to an AP poll released last week, just 27 percent trust him to make good choices when it comes to using military force. Meanwhile, a CNN poll released last week found a stunning 68 percent believe he has the wrong priorities.

In that context, The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom noticed Trump has been workshopping goals and rationales with reporters. To the Post, he said the goal is "freedom for the people.” He told Axios he can get Iran to make a deal “in two or three days.” He told the Times a deal might take "four to five weeks.” (He even suggested that he has “three very good choices" as to who would control Iran.) However, he told ABC News, actually nevermind.

“He doesn't sound convinced by any of it,” Gregg Carlstrom wrote on Twitter today. “He's throwing spaghetti at the wall. Ultimately I suspect he just wants to say he ‘solved’ a problem that has vexed every American president since Jimmy Carter. But there's no clear idea what that looks like and no plan for how to get there. And there are plenty of possible scenarios in which Trump declares victory and leaves the region with an absolute mess.”

The president does not sound convinced of his own words, because, again, he does not believe in his own words. He didn’t mean it when he said he would lower the cost of living. He didn’t mean it when he said he would bring “the Epstein class” to justice. He didn’t mean it when he said only “bad immigrants” would be deported. And now, after a decade of presenting himself as a peace-seeking isolationist who serves America’s needs first, he’s going to war, because he never meant a word.

Everything he is saying right now has one goal, which is creating conditions in which the unpopular president looks big and tough on TV for the purpose of gaining support in advance of this year’s midterms. You could say Trump is doing exactly what he accused Obama of doing. But you also say he’s doing what Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu is currently doing: waging a forever war in order to stay in power forever. Trump has been bragging for months about ending “eight wars.” (He said as much during the State of the Union address.) He believed being seen as a peace-making president would rally the base. That’s not working, so he now believes victory lies in the path of war-making. That this is a diametric reversal of a decade of isolationist rhetoric is irrelevant to him, because everything he said was intended in bad faith.

In the absence of an actual emergency, most Americans aren’t buying the rationale for war. Today, a new CNN found that nearly 60 percent disapprove. That’s before body bags start coming home. How high will disapproval go after the press corps focuses on the war dead? (Pete Hegseth said today he has not ruled out a ground invasion. Trump said today that the war could last four to five weeks.) And that poll was taken in the context of Trump’s heelturn. Every report I have read about Trump’s war has noted how it stands in stark contrast with his previous disdain for “forever wars” – a disdain now revealed to be totally fake.

The Democrats in the Congress are concentrating their energy on a bipartisan war-powers resolution. The goal is to reclaim constitutional authority from an executive who is abusing his. The president has to ask for permission to go to war, and many of the Democrats seem certain that the answer is going to be no.

That’s good, but the president’s betrayal of his stated principles in pursuit of a war to maintain his power presents a bigger opportunity – to dismantle what remains of the public’s trust and, most specifically, to accelerate the demoralization of his base. Maga voters are almost certainly not going to vote for a Democrat, but the Democrats can give reasons to stay home.

I’ll end by quoting Democrat Eric Swallwell, the California congressman: “This guy has lied to the American people about everything he promised he would do. … He said he would lower prices on day one. Instead, he put in his idiotic tariff policy that has raised Price. He said that he would get rid of war and now we are … a year into the administration. We have two new wars on the map in Venezuela and Iran. He has done the exact opposite this entire presidency of what he told he was going to do.”

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