America is being held hostage by a bloody madman -- and he's in the White House

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America is being held hostage by a bloody madman — and he’s in the White House
Donald Trump has his finger on the button. We now know he’ll push it, if he thinks it can get him re-elected
Lucian K. Truscott IV
October 19, 2019 12:00PM (UTC)


These are the most frightening words Trump has uttered since becoming president:

“Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. Sometimes you have to let them fight like two kids. Then you pull them apart.”

He said this at a campaign rally, naturally. In Texas, naturally. He tossed out the remark like just another chunk of red meat, so we can assume he meant what he said, because that’s when Trump tells us who he is, when he’s standing before an adoring crowd and he goes “off script.”

Trump’s entire presidency has been “off script,” but it’s telling when his excursions into the la-la land of his mind are this specific. He was speaking of the Kurds and the Turks, who have been engaged in bloody battles along the border between Syria and Turkey ever since Trump effectively gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade Syria on Oct. 5. Kurdish forces have already lost as many as 11,000 since they began fighting ISIS alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Now hundreds more have died, and thousands may yet lose their lives. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced and are refugees. It’s a bloody disaster that Trump refers to as a fight between children on a playground.

It isn’t just that Trump is a chickenshit draft-dodger who was famously exempted from military service because of bone spurs on his heels, and it isn’t just that he is famously disdainful of the advice of his own military commanders and foreign policy experts.

Because he is the president of the United States, he is the man who as commander in chief has the power to use nuclear weapons, and for the first time since he took office, I am afraid that he would not hesitate to use them if he thought it would help him win re-election.

What he just did to our allies the Kurds and the way he described it at his rally is all the evidence we need that he not only has no regard for human life, but he has no idea whatsoever what the waging of war is, what it means, what it does and what it costs. Just as money accrues to measure wealth, to Donald Trump, war is just another way to keep score.

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https://www.salon.com/2019/10/19/america-is-being-held-hostage-by-a-bloody-madman-and-hes-in-the-white-house/?fbclid=IwAR3lvAF0cCtwnILfHjrCqZIE4UpR-jZW1szwsxedzfHZxXIH3GWnvRvoGxo