I'm Keith Olderman and this is The Resistance.
Trump's missile strike in Syria was a stunt.
The heartfelt policy changed the secrecy, the element of surprise, the retaliation,
the neutralization, the mission itself, a stunt.
And much of the news media, and who knows how much of the public, believed every stupid
word.
They swaddled it like mother's milk, object distraction, and they fell for it.
The Trump gang, publicly confirmed, confirmed that the Russians were warned in advance per
the terms of a de-confliction understanding.
ABC News reports the Syrians guessed or knew far enough in advance to move personnel and
equipment out of the targeted air force base.
How in the hell could that have happened?
Maybe the Russians told them?
And while the Russians knew and the Syrians knew, did Congress know, did the American
people know?
They didn't even tell the State Department.
It was a stunt.
And what do you call a stunt in which the Americans make sure the principal ally of
the targeted nation knows in advance that it's coming, but our own Congress and State
Department do not?
Might that be called collusion with the enemy?
It was a stunt, a glorified fireworks show which did nothing to impede the Assad regime
from using again chemical weapons against its own people.
It was a stunt that did nothing to impede the Trump regime from using again propaganda
weapons against its own people.
Four years ago Trump sent out a fistful of tweets about Syria condemning exactly the
stunt he just pulled in Syria.
Two months before Trump's stunt, he banned refugees from Syria from coming here so the
kids and the adults who died such horrible deaths had one less place to run to because
of Donald Trump.
And seven days before Trump's stunt, his government said removing Assad wasn't the
plan anymore.
And two days before Trump's stunt, as the children still lay there choking to death,
Trump blamed Barack Obama for it.
And also two days before Trump's stunt, he cut U.S. contributions to the United Nations
Population Fund.
And last year, 48,000 pregnant women in Syria were reportedly able to deliver their babies
in safety because of that funding Trump just cut.
So don't tell me he had some kind of change of heart because of the video of those dying
kids because by the end of the year, more children may have died in Syria because of
Donald Trump than because of Bashar al-Assad.
And less than 24 hours after the last of the missiles hit the ground, the Syrians were
running more missions out of that same base, bombing more people.
We fired what is reported to be $94 million worth of missiles and we didn't even put
a hole in the runways.
And nobody noticed because 79 senators publicly said this stunt, this meaningless, dangerous,
cynical, exploitative, bullshit stunt that didn't even slow Assad's bombers down was
a good thing.
And then Trump also claimed this was the plan in the first place.
The reason you don't generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly
fix, fill in and top.
Right, when you strike air bases, you never try to destroy the runways to keep the planes
from taking off, do you?
And the media bought all of this, one TV anchor giddily quoted Leonard Cohen lyrics
about the beauty of the video of the missiles.
A TV analyst said, I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night.
Which is exactly what another analyst on the same network said a month earlier after Trump's
speech to the House and the Senate because every time this idiot Trump doesn't crap
his pants or pay one of his companies another million dollars of taxpayer money, apparently
that makes him Abraham goddamn Lincoln.
The retired anchor men who will not go away and the ex-generals making TV per diem and
the war correspondents who have nothing to do if there's no war, congratulated Trump
on getting away with this one without having an escalation of the conflict.
And USA Today wrote about Trump's successful week and asked if he would continue his winning
ways.
Just like in the three years after 9-11, the news media in this country is right now suffering
from a kind of journalistic, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Everything around them is so outside their own experience, so different and alarming
and real, so existentially threatening that none of their cliches fit anymore and none
of their default storylines work anymore and by God when something vaguely familiar happens
like American missiles taking off and blowing stuff up in the Middle East without congressional
authorization, they all feel like the tiny little world inside the Beltway.
The only thing simple enough for them to digest and regurgitate and pretend they know what
the hell they're talking about, they feel like that is back.
But the unique nightmare of a president who has something wrong with his brain and tells
you he has been in office 13 weeks when it's only been 11, he's finally pivoting just
like they predicted into an ordinary president who just blows stuff up and they can revert
to rewriting what they wrote in 2010 or 1996 or 19 goddamn 12.
It was a stunt and the media believed every stupid word, object, distraction, and they
fell for it.
I need to use a graphic to fully explain the media at the moment.
Swoosh kaboom, boots on the ground, greatest generation, easy to understand.
Disinformation, alleged collusion, hacking, voter registration rolls, micro-targeting,
not so easy to understand.
And what did those corners of the political media miss while they fell for Trump's stunt?
They missed nearly four dozen tweets from Trump in 2013 and 2014, virtual messages
in a bottle from the Trump of Christmas past to the Trump of Christmas present like this
one.
Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria if you do many very bad things will
happen and from that fight the U.S. gets nothing.
And they also missed all of Trump's 2017 cheerleaders in the Senate, in the House,
in the media praising him for this stunt when they condemned Obama for even proposing action
four years ago.
Sean Hannity, September 2013, glad our arrogant president is enjoying his taxpayer-funded
golf outing after announcing the U.S. should take military action against Syria.
And in falling for it, again, much of the media missed the real lessons of Trump's
serious stunt.
Less than 24 hours later, what was the pro-Trump super PAC Great America, the one run by the
eternal Republican Ed Rollins, a man who told me to my face that I was right, that Trump
is crazy?
What was that PAC doing?
Fundraising off the children dead in Syria from sarin gas and off Trump's stunt.
Fundraising off a stunt that accomplished nothing except to make the stupid people of this
country fall for it.
Just like they fell for it in Iraq in 2003 and just like they'll fall for it next time
because the actual outcome of the Syrian stunt was that Trump has now learned that whenever
he can convert true international outrage and heartbreak into a publicity photo op stunt,
he will get applause and support and prestige and people from around the nation willing
to pretend he is a president and not an unstable egomaniac.
People willing to pretend he's a leader and not a charlatan who while in the middle
of being investigated for possible electoral collusion with Russia decides it's the perfect
time for something that sure looks like military collusion with Russia by staging a phony airstrike
that saved no children delivered no message drew no line showed no leadership provided
no hope resolved no crisis and did not even produce potholes in the runways resist.
