'National Hero' Trump Blasts Establishment Media for Ignoring Success Against ISIS
President Donald Trump zinged the establishment media bias against him on Monday by noting that any other president who brought troops home alive after achieving their mission would be proclaimed a “national hero.”
In mid-December, the White House announced that U.S. troops would be coming home from Syria. The action triggered condemnation from multiple media outlets.
“The stab in the back will send an unforgettable message to all who are asked to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism: Washington is an unreliable and dangerous partner,” The Washington Post opined.
The New York Times said that Trump’s “abrupt and dangerous decision, detached from any broader strategic context or any public rationale, sowed new uncertainty about America’s commitment to the Middle East, its willingness to be a global leader and Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief.”
Trump said Monday on Twitter that his critics had missed the point.
“If anybody but Donald Trump did what I did in Syria, which was an ISIS loaded mess when I became President, they would be a national hero. ISIS is mostly gone, we’re slowly sending our troops back home to be with their families, while at the same time fighting ISIS remnants,” he tweeted.
If anybody but Donald Trump did what I did in Syria, which was an ISIS loaded mess when I became President, they would be a national hero. ISIS is mostly gone, we’re slowly sending our troops back home to be with their families, while at the same time fighting ISIS remnants……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
“I campaigned on getting out of Syria and other places. Now when I start getting out the Fake News Media, or some failed Generals who were unable to do the job before I arrived, like to complain about me & my tactics, which are working. Just doing what I said I was going to do!” Trump said. “Except the results are FAR BETTER than I ever said they were going to be! I campaigned against the NEVER ENDING WARS, remember!”
…I campaigned on getting out of Syria and other places. Now when I start getting out the Fake News Media, or some failed Generals who were unable to do the job before I arrived, like to complain about me & my tactics, which are working. Just doing what I said I was going to do!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
…..Except the results are FAR BETTER than I ever said they were going to be! I campaigned against the NEVER ENDING WARS, remember!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
“I am the only person in America who could say that, ‘I’m bringing our great troops back home, with victory,’ and get BAD press. It is Fake News and Pundits who have FAILED for years that are doing the complaining. If I stayed in Endless Wars forever, they would still be unhappy!
I am the only person in America who could say that, “I’m bringing our great troops back home, with victory,” and get BAD press. It is Fake News and Pundits who have FAILED for years that are doing the complaining. If I stayed in Endless Wars forever, they would still be unhappy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
In a 2016 interview, Trump laid out his priorities for Syria.
“What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria,” he said, according to The Guardian. “You’re going to end up in world war three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.”
“You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk,” he said, adding that Syrian leader Bahar al-Assad was “secondary, to me, to Isis.”
The liberal media’s rush to judgment over Trump’s planned pullout from Syria was met with responses such as that of Robert S. Ford, a former envoy to Syria during the administration of former President Barack Obama, who in an Op-Ed for The Washington Post, called Trump’s decision “essentially correct.”
Ford noted that although a possible re-emergence of the Islamic State group is “possible, although in western Syria, which is under the control of the Syrian government and its allies, there is little visible Islamic State activity. In any case, U.S. troops can’t destroy the Islamic State ideology.”
Ford’s bottom line was that Trump “should view the hullabaloo that erupted after he announced the Syrian pullout as an opportunity to take a number of steps to make the most of his essentially correct, but widely unpopular, move.”
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