Trump's tweet struck fear at Pentagon that he was declaring war on North Korea
Donald Trump kicked off his Wednesday morning the usual way: on Twitter. He congratulated himself for his rally in Ohio Tuesday night, claiming he “broke all records.” (He didn’t.) He attacked his fellow Republican, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, saying she “really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday” because she refused to support repealing Obamacare. […]
He congratulated himself for his rally in Ohio Tuesday night, claiming he “broke all records.” (He didn’t.) He attacked his fellow Republican, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, saying she “really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday” because she refused to support repealing Obamacare.
And he had the entire Pentagon on the edge of its seat, waiting to find out if we were going to war with North Korea.
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
For nine minutes, our military awaited the next tweet from its commander in chief to find out what, exactly, government would not accept or allow. As BuzzFeed reports, that tweet “raised fears that the president was getting ready to announce strikes on North Korea or some other military action.”
It was only after the second tweet, sent a full nine minutes later, that the military learned Trump had unilaterally decided to ban transgender men and women from serving in the military.
During the White House press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly insisted that Trump had made the decision in consultation with the Pentagon. But sources in the Pentagon said they had been blindsided by the announcement.
When reporters pressed Sanders to explain how Trump could have made a policy announcement so suddenly, seemingly without any coordination with the Department of Defense, she threatened to shut down the briefing entirely.
“If those are the only questions we have,” she said, “I’m going to call it a day.”
That the president used his personal Twitter account to announce a hateful, discriminatory policy should not come as a relief to anyone. Trump ran on a platform of bigotry, and six months into his failed presidency, he has aggressively pursued it.
But the fact that this president is so unhinged, so compulsive, so unpredictable, so spiteful, and so unwilling to defer to the experts around him, the reality that he could declare war on another country as part of his morning Twitter routine is horrifying but not beyond imagination.
If the Pentagon is terrified of this president, our country is in a very bad place indeed.
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