President Trump had a game plan long before he took office and it looked like this: Should things start to go awry and reelection seems shaky, just start a war with Iran. But at the time, Trump claimed this was going to be Obama’s game plan, which never happened.
Well, guess who is following the playbook down to the recent drone killing of Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani?
Yep, the orange big toe himself.
On Thursday night, Trump authorized the airstrike that would kill Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis—the deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Six others were also killed in the attack that no one in Congress knew was happening because the president left his phone at South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s house—or at least that’s what he told his father, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
And get this: The president didn’t even follow protocol by notifying the “Gang of Eight,” which involves informing Congress members on both sides of the aisle on highly sensitive national security matters. But you know who he did tell? Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, because the two were spotted golfing earlier this week. (Well, Trump was spotted golfing and Graham was spotted holding and polishing his balls.)
“I was briefed about the potential operation when I was down in Florida,” Graham said Friday morning on Fox & Friends. “I appreciate being brought into the orbit,” TPM reports.
You know who wasn’t briefed? Trump agitator, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is pissed and wants to be briefed A$AP Rocky!
Because Trump keeps meticulous Twitter records, there is literally a tweet for everything he does. Seriously, there is a tweet on Trump’s timeline for everything he’s ever done or planning to do in his life. Thankfully, internet-sleuths searched the president’s Twitter until they found Trump’s plan.
“@BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 14, 2011.
Days later, Trump spouted on video, “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective. So the only way he figures that he’s going to get reelected—and as sure as you’re sitting there—is to start a war with Iran,” a Washington Post video editor tweeted.
Then, on Nov. 29, 2011, Trump noted that “In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.”
Nearly a year later, on Oct. 22, 2012, Trump said it again: “Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected—be careful Republicans!”
In October 2012, in case it wasn’t clear that Trump believes that starting a war is a possible way to boost poll numbers, he tweeted that Obama would “launch a strike in Libya or Iran,” because his “poll numbers are in tailspin.”
But I’m sure that this war is totally legitimate and has nothing to do with the president’s polling number coming in lower than a Kardashian’s saggy prosthetic ass and the fact that he’s facing a Senate impeachment trial.