For Trump lickspittle extraordinaire Sean Hannity, Trump’s failure to turn the Afghan peace talks into a reality show starring himself was just more proof of his greatness… like Winston Churchill!
Just as when Hannity claimed Trump’s lies about Hurricane Dorian and Alabama were truth “a lot of psychotic jackasses in the media mob” refused to acknowledge,” Hannity said last night that Trump’s narcissistic bumbling was a failure by the “media mob” to recognize his masterful deal-making skills. And never mind that Trump had just botched the deal.
Media Matters has the transcript:
We saw Europe learn this the hard way. Remember, Neville Chamberlain came back after meeting with Hitler in Munich and trying to appease Nazi Germany told the people of Great Britain they will have peace in their time -- but in the end, appeasement never works.
Winston Churchill had the moral clarity, he understood the nature of this enemy, and he knew there was only one way to negotiate with a tyrant and a killer and a mass murderer like Hitler, and he said it -- "blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
Hannity followed those statements with a long clip of Churchill, supposedly demonstrating how he's Trump’s “moral clarity” twin.
Hannity and other Fox Newsers never tired of comparing Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain. But it was Trump, not Obama, who thought it would be a great idea to invite the Taliban to Camp David in order to orchestrate a made-for-TV moment.
The New York Times did a deep dive into Trump’s Camp-David-Reality-Show impulsive incompetence. According to the Times, it was Trump’s idea to bring the Taliban to Camp David. “The leaders of a rugged militant organization deemed terrorists by the United States would be hosted in the mountain getaway used for presidents, prime ministers and kings just three days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that led to the Afghan war,” as the Times aptly described the scenario. Just what Churchill would have done, I'm sure.
Trump’s star turn was unsurprisingly ill-fated. Although Taliban leaders reportedly accepted the idea of a Camp David visit — they insisted it come after a peace deal was announced.
That was a problem – why? Because it would take away from Trump’s moment of glory in the spotlight. From the Times (with my emphases added):
That would become a fundamental dividing point contributing to the collapse of the talks. Mr. Trump did not want the Camp David meeting to be a celebration of the deal; after staying out of the details of what has been a delicate effort in a complicated region, Mr. Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be.
The idea was for Mr. Trump to hold separate meetings at Camp David with the Taliban and with Mr. Ghani, leading to a more global resolution.
Trump and/or his team of “best people” blew his grand moment. More from the Times:
What would have been one of the biggest headline-grabbing moments of his tenure was put together on the spur of the moment and then canceled on the spur of the moment. The usual National Security Council process was dispensed with; only a small circle of advisers was even clued in.And even after it fell apart, Mr. Trump took it upon himself to disclose the secret machinations in a string of Saturday night Twitter messages that surprised not only many national security officials across the government but even some of the few who were part of the deliberations.
Trump blamed the collapse of his Taliban TV moment on a car bomb attack that killed 12 people, including an American soldier. It's also quite likely Bolton’s departure from the Trump administration today is somehow involved. But, as Times reporter Peter Baker noted on The Daily today, Republicans have made their displeasure about a Camp David meeting known by praising Trump for not going through with the plan.
But leave it to Trump’s most devoted propagandist Hannity to inflate Trump’s spectacular ineptitude and tone deafness into something Churchillian and heroic.
Watch Hannity gush over Trump’s foreign policy awesomeness below, from the September 9, 2019 Hannity, via Media Matters.
Published with permission of NewsHounds.us
