Okay, that little speech was weird.
The man goes veering off into weird paths when he’s not reading the teleprompter — and you can tell every time he does, because his ability to read off the teleprompter (oh, the irony!) is bloody awful — weird pacing, an inability to pace his words naturally to what’s being scrolled past there. “… World War … … … 1 …” “and God bless the United States … of … America …”
And what’s with all the looks off to his left? Was something over there making him think there was another camera?
As to the speech itself — it’s interesting (and, honestly, probably a positive thing) that the UK and France are part of this attack. The “We’re doing this, and here’s why” part was pretty straightforward, the sort of thing any president would give. Then he sort of meandered into discussions about evil and Iran / Russia and local Arab nations paying for military efforts there and the US forces attacking ISIS and what great, great warriors they are … and those parts were a weird mix of Trumpian stream of thought and his wooden script reading.
I don’t have any brilliant answers on Syria. The questions going on are how long this retaliation against Syria continues (the implication of the speech was this was an ongoing thing), how much that costs, and what actual actions will be trigger points. Assad has been doing various brutal attacks over the last year until Trump chose to respond to this particular chemical attack.
And, of course, there’s been all the telegraphing of these attacks by Twitter. Smooth move, Donald.
Crazy times …
Trump: U.S. launches missile strikes in Syria – The Washington Post
President Trump orders military strike in retaliation for a chemical attack near Damascus.
You just know that Trump is going to go to his bedroom totally seething that he had to call out Putin. You could see how he did not want to deliver that "you're known by the company you keep" line.
It was brought up some time ago. Time for the 1% to orchestrate war. Who benefits here? It certainly wasn't Iraq in the last fiasco….. so who?
Do you ever wonder if Donnie spends more time prepping for his campaign speeches than he does his policy speeches?
I listened to the speech on the radio while driving home, so when Trump started to use Really Big Adjectives, I couldn't tell if he was improvising, or if his speechwriter was trying to capture Trump's style.
Later, around 8:00 Pacific, Mattis was apparently saying that this wave of attacks was over. So much for the picture of endless engagement.
+Valdis Klētnieks I have to wonder if Trump's bromance with Putin has gotten a bit strained. He loved Putin for the complements that he got from a world leader, a strong-man who Trump was dying to emulate. But Putin's been dissing Trump through his actions on a regular basis, and the President's ego may be sore enough for him to lash back.
After all, he's done that with all his other friends when they've stopped being what he wants them to be.
+John E. Bredehoft Yeah. That was a real surprise. The touted "sustained response" seems to have been a single shot.
Which I suspect characterizes Trump in more than one way.
+Dave Hill “Sustained response” vs “single shot” insert crude joke about Donnie’s lack of stamina.