However, Trump seems to have done almost nothing to help Russia. He has praised NATO and is cooperating with moves to place more NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep. He has not even tried to remove sanctions. He has made no moves towards detente with Russia in spite of his earlier rhetoric and campaign promises. Now he has blamed Assad for a gas attack in northern Syria before there has been any investigation or attempts by the UN to find out exactly what happened. Not satisfied with blaming Assad, whom Putin supports, Trump went on to attack an air base where Russians were present. As the saying goes: “With friends like that, who needs enemies?
The decision to strike Assad’s airbase had surprising support in that Hillary Clinton had just hours before the announcement recommended there be attacks on Assad’s air force: “Assad has an air force, and that air force is the cause of most of these civilian deaths as we have seen over the years and as we saw again in the last few days. And I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them.” Perhaps, Trump’s missile strike has not gone far enough. There are already voices clamoruing for more, But at least it is a start. This may be the beginning of a new friendship between the defeated Hillary and the triumphant Trump. Both may find their ratings start to soar. Many of those who just a day or so ago were calling Trump a Putin Puppet see his bombing before any investigation, without UN or Congressional approval, and against international law as worthy of praise and as presidential. The same people had just days earlier been searching out his lies, and demonizing him at every turn. Trump is not the only one who can forget what they previously said and change direction within days. RememberTrump had warned Obama that he should not bomb Assad and he should get Congressional approval to do so if he did.
There has been much activity on Twitter regarding Trumps attack. Some supporters of Trump were aghast as during his campaign Trump had said that he would not involve himself in wars that were costly and not really essential to US interests and often involved huge wasteful expenditures. One tweet said: “I guess Trump wasn’t “Putin’s puppet” after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I’m officially OFF the Trump train.” Anne Coulter the well-known right-wing commentator tweeted: “Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV.” Another tweet emphasized the hypocrisy involved in the decision: “US aids Saddam’s use of CW against Iran in 80’s; then resorts to military force over bogus CW allegations: 1st in 2003 and now in Syria.” 2003 allegations refer to Saddam having chemical weapons (CW).
