Former CIA director John Brennan, an intelligence professional for more than 30 years’ tells MS Now that convicted felon Donald Trump is lying about an “imminent threat” that did not exist from Iran. The country did not have developed nuclear capability or ballistic missiles capable of reaching America.
Speaking on MS Now’s The Weekend broadcast, Brennan said: “the lies are coming fast and furiously.” Trump, who doubles down on his lies, has no exit plan.
Brennan is not alone. MAGA-Trumpite Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, quit in disgust and told Trump he could support the attack or the disgraced president’s mishandling it. Other former intel operatives are joining in.
The Editorial Board of The New York Times, in an article published today, says lying is standard behavior for Trump:
From his first announcement of the attack on Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump has issued a stream of falsehoods about the war. He has said Iran wants to engage in negotiations, though its government shows no sign of it. He has claimed that the United States “destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability” when Tehran continues to inflict damage throughout the region. He has said the war is almost complete even as he calls in reinforcements from around the globe.
Lying is standard behavior for Mr. Trump, of course. His political career began with a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, and he has lied about his business, his wealth, his inauguration crowd size, his defeat in the 2020 election and so much more. A CNN tally of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods during one part of his first term found that he averaged eight false claims per day. Many people are so accustomed to his lies that they hardly notice them anymore.
Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive. When a president signals that the truth does not matter in wartime, he encourages his cabinet and his generals to mislead the country and one another about how the war is going. He creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common. He makes it harder to win by hiding the realities of conflict and by making allies wary of joining the fight. Ultimately, he undermines American values and interests.
The president was only a few minutes into his Feb. 28 announcement of the start of the conflict when he offered an obviously contradictory rationale for it. He repeated his claim that American attacks last June “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program while also citing that program as a reason to go to war. The claim of obliteration is false: Iran retains about 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium, potentially enough for 10 warheads.
The lies have continued since then. Days later, Mr. Trump said the U.S. military had a “virtually unlimited supply” of high-end munitions. The Pentagon nevertheless has had to withdraw weapons from South Korea to sustain its efforts in the Middle East. He has also asserted that “nobody” believed Iran would retaliate by attacking Arab countries. On Monday, he said that “no, the greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit” neighboring countries. In truth, some experts had warned of precisely this scenario.
In another instance, Mr. Trump has used false information to continue his alarming penchant to portray people who contradict him as un-American. Last weekend, he posted an allegation that “Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” had spread fake videos of an American aircraft burning in the ocean. The White House has offered no examples of American media outlets having done so. Instead, several debunked fake online videos, CNN reported. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump wrote that “you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!”
A shocking falsehood came on March 7, when Mr. Trump claimed in his typically offhand way that a strike on an elementary school in the town of Minab during the first hours of the war “was done by Iran.” The attack killed at least 175 people, most of them children. The U.S. military has conducted an investigation and preliminarily concluded that an American missile mistakenly hit the school. The military deserves credit for its honesty. The commander in chief, however, still has not retracted his statement.
Starting a war is the most serious action that a political leader can take. It ends lives and can change history. The decisions that guide war must be based in reality, and presidents owe American service members and their families the truth about why they are being asked to fight. Whatever short-term gain Mr. Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world.
American voters knew Trump was a serial liar when they elected him to a third term after rejecting him four years earlier. In the upcoming midterm elections, voters can, and must, reject the treasonous actions of the MAGA maggots in Congress who support his corruption and criminal actions.
If they do so, a new leadership in Congress should take the first steps needed to remove him from office, convict him of his many crimes and send him to prison to rot away until he dies.
