Rachel Maddow went off on Donald Trump on Wednesday for winging it with the lives of American troops in Syria and essentially using them as his personal play toy.
As the MSNBC host pointed out, the president put no real planning or thought into his decision to suddenly announce he was pulling all U.S. troops out of Syria. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House staff appeared to know what was going on.
Meanwhile, thousands of troops and their family members are wondering what’s going to happen next.
“Whether or not you are for or against an ongoing U.S. military presence in Syria, or even if you don’t particularly know one way or the other, this is not the way that U.S. troops and their families expect to have their safety and their lives just batted around like it doesn’t matter,” Maddow said.
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Video:
Rachel Maddow explains the chaos surrounding Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/XeJNMeKVeN
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) December 20, 2018
Maddow said:
If you’re an American military family tonight, if you have a family member serving in Syria tonight, and a couple thousand American families are in that situation because there are a couple thousand Americans serving in Syria right now, I cannot imagine how unnerving today must have been for you. Watching this White House, watching this president just try to blag through this. I mean, imagine if you’ve got skin in the game in your family here. I mean, whether or not you are for or against an ongoing U.S. military presence in Syria, or even if you don’t particularly know one way or the other, this is not the way that U.S. troops and their families expect to have their safety and their lives just blythly batted around like it doesn’t really matter and who cares what happens and maybe we’ll just try to do the whole thing on Twitter and who even knows if we’ll follow through, who cares? Ask the White House for details. No, ask the Pentagon for details. No, nobody apparently has any details. The president is just winging this one. And does he mean it if it’s on Twitter, does it count? If he is just winging it with the life of your son or your daughter or your husband or your wife over there in uniform right now, it’s been a spectacle for all of us. But if you are in a personal situation with regard to that conflict right now, this must have been a very difficult day.
Trump doesn’t care about the troops
Decisions regarding the lives of U.S. troops are the most important a president has to make. They shouldn’t be made on the fly, and they must be made in coordination with the Pentagon and our military leaders. It also helps to have the support of U.S. allies.
But today, Trump essentially made the decision via Twitter without taking into account what the military actually wanted, what it would mean for the troops on the ground, and the complexities in the region.
Donald Trump has repeatedly wrapped himself in the flag and declared himself the face of American patriotism – but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
His reckless decisionmaking on Wednesday was just the latest evidence that he only cares about members of the U.S. military when he can use them as a political pawn.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
