Though the timing couldn’t have been worse, at least the president wasn’t suggesting he win the high humanitarian honor for deescalating a crisis of his own creation
Photo: Brittany Greeson/Getty Images Days after authorizing an unambiguous act of war backed by a shoddy rationale, the president of the United States began this week by reiterating a threat to commit war crimes by bombing cultural sites in Iran.
“I made a deal. I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace prize for saving the country. I said ‘did I have something to do with it?’ Yeah. But you know that’s the way it is. As long as we know, that’s all that matters. I saved a big war, I saved a couple of ‘em.”
The context for this frequent Trump complaint is unclear: He may be referring to his February 2019 claim that he saved 3 million people from a strike in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib by informing the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran of a pending offensive in the region, or to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s 2018 recommendation that Trump receive the award for his negotiations with North Korea.
Trump portrayed the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani as a victory that only he could deliver, justifying his decision not to seek congressional approval for the strike last week by claiming that Democrats would have bungled the operation. “They’re saying, ‘You should get permission from Congress, you should come in and tell us what you want to do — you should come in and tell us, so that we can call up the fake news that’s back there, and we can leak it,’” Trump said.
This accounting could use a second look: One Koch-funded study estimating the cost of a single-payer health-care system in the U.S. found that all health-care expenditures under M4A would equate to $54.9 trillion, which is $2 trillion less than a business-as-usual scenario.When the president asked about the whereabouts of the vice-president’s son, his supporters went low, referencing Biden’s well-documented substance abuse issues.
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