Day 1,011: Trump handles announcement of ISIS leader’s death in predictably disgraceful way
Reports also indicate raid succeeded in spite of Trump, not because of him.
Donald Trump announced Sunday morning the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi resulting from a U.S. military raid in Syria. Special operations forces took out on the world’s biggest terrorists in a daring Saturday raid.
However, Trump couldn’t even handle a basic announcement without making a mockery of himself and the office of the presidency.
The first group he thanked — even ahead of Americans on the ground — were the Russians.
Ignoring the seriousness of the mission and the very real American lives at risk, Trump compared the entire scene to a movie.
And Trump didn’t seem to know basics of the raid.
Breaking protocol, Trump kept information about the raid from top Congressional leadership, despite apparently telling Russia about it first.
He served extremists propaganda on a silver platter with needless sensationalizing al-Baghdadi’s death.
Of course, Trump had to compare this raid to the 2011 one in Abbottabad, Pakistan that ended in Osama bin Laden’s death. He tried to denigrate the bin Laden death as somehow less-than.
Trump also claimed 9/11 could have been prevented had people read his book.
Speaking in the third person, Trump said of ISIS that they “used the Internet better than anybody” except himself.
Trying to portray Trump has calm and powerful, the White House used a photo from 90 minutes before the raid as though it were an in-moment reaction to the raid.
And perhaps most wildly, the raid happened mostly in spite of Trump, not because of him, and he was kept in the dark on the raid itself.
For months, intelligence officials had kept Mr. Trump apprised of what he had set as a top priority, the hunt for Mr. al-Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted terrorist.
But Mr. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal order [from Syria] three weeks ago disrupted the meticulous planning underway and forced Pentagon officials to speed up the plan for the risky night raid before their ability to control troops, spies and reconnaissance aircraft disappeared with the pullout, the officials said.
Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death in the raid on Saturday, they said, occurred largely in spite of, and not because of, Mr. Trump’s actions.
It is unclear how much Mr. Trump considered the intelligence on Mr. al-Baghdadi’s location when he made the surprise decision to withdraw the American troops during a telephone call on Oct. 6 with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. What is clear, military officials said, is that it put commanders on the ground under even more pressure to carry out the complicated operation.
Moreover, the Kurds, largely ignored in Trump’s remarks and abandoned in Syria weeks ago, were instrumental to the mission.
The Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, one official said, provided more intelligence for the raid than any single country.
Sunday, Trump had a substantial moment to seize and a relatively simple task at hand. Much like Barack Obama did after the bin Laden raid, in prepared and vetted remarks, Trump just had to tell the world what happened succinctly, professionally and without self-aggrandizement. Instead, Trump went off script and used the moment to pat his own back for something he did not do while embarrassing the nation and the office.
1,011 days in, 451 to go
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