Trump Goes Iraq WMD…In Poland?

By Benjamin M. Adams on July 6, 2017    @BenAdamsO_O

During his Poland visit, Trump took a few questions from U.S. media — always a few too many from Trump’s standpoint. In what seemed like a bizarre non-sequitur, Trump pivoted from a question about Russian interference to talking about WMD in Iraq, which is a burning issue…from 15 years ago. This comment may be many things, but a non-sequitur it is not. Quite to the contrary, Trump’s seemingly odd response underscores one of the consistent themes that proved central to his campaign. Put more directly, the Bush administration falsehoods about Iraq WMD set the stage for Trump’s ascension to the presidency.

First, deceptions about Iraq WMD allowed Trump to personally devastate Jeb Bush in the primaries. Recall Jeb’s feckless waffling about whether or not the Iraq war was a good idea. Also recall the stunned silence that befell the debate stage after Trump attacked Jeb’s fairy tale about George W. Bush keeping America safe.

Second, the issue exposed Trump’s GOP primary opponents as complicit in the historical white-washing of one of America’s greatest foreign policy blunders. Aside from Trump, every one of the GOP contenders stayed silent while Jeb slung the false narrative that George Bush was a protector of the U.S., who had not responded to the 9-11 attacks by starting two unwise and unwinnable wars against countries that had not been responsible for the attack on our nation.

Third, the issue established Trump’s appeal to independents, sometimes referred to (unfortunately) as Reagan democrats. Ironically, Trump accomplished this by breaking Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment that, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

Fourth, and perhaps most critically, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell lies about Iraq WMD, coupled with the media’s failure to critically examine those false claims, created a fundamental mistrust among Americans of both the government and media. It was this deep mistrust that served as the platform from which Trump launched his campaign of demagoguery and distortion. To this day, this mistrust sustains Trump’s “Fake News” narrative, a prophylactic against media stories that threaten to expose Trump supporters to knowledge of his own lies and misdeeds.

So when Trump responds to a question about Russian electoral interference by talking about WMD in Iraq, it is anything but a non-sequitur. Rather, it is a continuation of his central theme: Don’t believe anything that anyone tells you. Don’t trust either political party. Don’t trust the media. I alone can fix this.