“As a man obsessed by himself, Trump has, in his own mind, elevated every slaughter into a narrative that demonstrates his own genius and political savvy.” From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:
There is always something new and exciting coming out of Washington. Last week’s big story centered on the presumed prerogative of the United States to kill people anywhere in the world without necessarily having to make the legal or moral case that they deserved death. Inevitably, the impulse to do just that derives from the very top of the government system with President Donald J Trump having on a number of occasions verbalized his national security policy, such as it is, by explicitly stating that whenever his administration encounters “enemies” of the US, the newly renamed Secretary of War would exercise the right to “kill them.” Trump claims that as president he can “do whatever he wants,” suggesting that he has never read the US Constitution.
Admittedly the brain-addled Trump is not the first US president to adopt such a de facto policy of L’État, c’est moi, though he may be the first to openly admit it. George W Bush “legalized” torture through his embrace of the “global war on terror” with him in the role of the “new sheriff in town.” He was succeeded by Barack Obama, who held weekly meetings in the White House to draw up lists of American citizens and others overseas who would be assassinated by drones. He notably killed the two al-Awlakis, a father and son from Arizona residing in Yemen, in that fashion. Joe Biden went one step further, by proxy, providing Israel with the arms and political support to carry out the genocide deaths of a minimum of 100,000 Gazans. When privately challenged by his staff on the policy, he responded “I am a Zionist” and refused to consider pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to moderate his actions.
But when it comes to Trump, one has to give him credit for his ability to turn multiple deaths into an ongoing comic routine complete with making up funny but demeaning names for the women journalists who question him during press conferences. In the past few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded. To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent he whined: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.” And he complained that the New York Times’ correspondent Katie Rogers was “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.” But the most extreme put-down went to White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” But even worse went to Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: they were described as guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”
