Trump was tweeting during SEAL raid in Yemen

The Navy SEAL raid against Al-Qaeda in Yemen, which resulted in one navy SEAL being killed and several wounded due Trump's decision to go in before they were ready (possibly the Flynn/Bannon influence), is now known to have occurred while Trump was tweeting!

That's right, while the US Navy SEALs were engaged in a desperate firefight against Al-Qaeda terrorists, where they were pinned down with sniper fire and penned in by minefields and a hail of machine-gun fire due to poor pre-battle surveillance and reconaissance, Trump was tweeting out his whiney complaints against the New York Times for not being sufficiently worshipful to him.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/825690087857995776

Trump clearly has issues when it comes to criticism; he's extremely thin-skinned and he seems to spend a lot of time and energy complaining about, and attacking, the news media. If he sees a story he disagrees with, he turns it into a media fight and complains about how he's being unfairly portrayed and how everyone is biased against poor widdle Twump. It really is astonishing how much time and energy the White House spends obsessing over media battles.

Why do they care so much? Why do Trump and the alt-right get so triggered by what the 'liberal' news media writes? They claim they don't care what "SJWs" and "cucks" say, but it's clear they desperately crave the good graces and opinions of the media and progressive left. Perhaps this was to be expected; when a reality TV star becomes the president, should we have predicted he would be completely media obsessed, that he would confuse the actual business of governing and making policy with the 24-hour media cycle? He seems to think the media cycle is reality, and that the presidents job is to be a participant in it and fight battles within it rather than engaging with the media as necessary but concentrating on his duties.

In the scheme of things all of that is less important than the fact Trump ordered a raid to go ahead without proper planning and due diligence (President Obama had delayed the raid as he believed the military needed more time, prep, intel etc), and that he didn't even bother to stay in the situation room to monitor the raid but was tweeting about how the evil New York Times hurt his poor feelings. This manchild is president, for goodness sake.

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Reply 1

2384911

AlexanderHam, as much as I like you and how much I disagree with some of Trump's actions/opinions, I have to defend him on the basis that he is being unfairly demonised / had his actions taken out of context and warped in some cases. Like the whole thing with the Russian prostitutes and having them pee on Obama's bed, that turned out to be a complete lie didn't it?

Personally I believe that the attention should be turned away from Trump and instead towards that other guy.. the one that really hates gays.

EDIT: and I'm pretty sure Obama used to play golf all the time, I remember once he was playing golf when something really really bad happened?

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 2

joe cooley

While Obama never once played a round of golf while US forces were in combat.

You're looking more desperate each day.

Reply 3

AlexanderHam

Original post by AshEntropy

Like the whole thing with the Russian prostitutes and having them pee on Obama's bed, that turned out to be a complete lie didn't it?

Huh? When/who demonstrated it was a "complete lie"? No such thing has been demonstrated. Nobody knows the truth of the allegations; what we do know is that Christopher Steele (the highly-respected former MI6 officer who used to run British intelligence's Russia desk) got reports of this story from multiple independent sources. Nobody proved it was a lie, it is as yet unverified.

Personally I believe that the attention should be turned away from Trump and instead towards that other guy.. the one that really hates gays.

Attention should be turned away from the president, the one with the power, the one who is making the decisions that affect the entire world, toward Mike Pence, the guy who really doesn't have that much power.. but hey, he hates the gays! I don't see the logic of that.

EDIT: and I'm pretty sure Obama used to play golf all the time, I remember once he was playing golf when something really really bad happened?

When?

Reply 4

username2950448

Original post by Mathemagicien

You really want Trump to personally oversee each and every military operation?

You really have a lot of faith in the guy!

True, one navy SEAL was killed because Trump wasn't present, imagine how many would have been killed if Trump actually was present.

Reply 5

AlexanderHam

Original post by Mathemagicien

You really want Trump to personally oversee each and every military operation?

Nice strawman (and by nice, I mean laughable).

Usually when a major operation is ongoing, the President is in the White House Situation Room. I expect he'd want to oversee an operation he'd ordered, the first such raid of his presidency.

The fact the mission was completely botched proves my point; his inattention is having terrible consequences.

Reply 6

2384911

Is this really what politics does to people :colonhash:

Reply 7

Joep95

Original post by AshEntropy

Every time something bad happened he was playing golf

Reply 8

StormCommando

Ayo chill, fam
The raid encompassed 1 US loss vs 14 enemy losses. A trove of intel was captured. I would hesitate to call that a failure. This was clearly a big operation, otherwise the previous administration wouldn't have sat on it for months as they did. It was also clearly a risky operation, but I would say (from what I know of it) that it went down pretty well.

I find you general criticism pretty disingenuous though, on the grounds that Trump relieved the overwhelming majority of votes from military personnel. Obama, in the last few months, started mobilising large numbers of frontline forces to near the Russian border. Killary would have continued along those lines and sent more in, and her endgame was clearly to trigger ww3. What else are you going to achieve by sabre-rattling against the second most militarily powerful countries in the world, and inventing ridiculous 'hacking' conspiracy theories as she did?

Trump averted WW3 simply by getting voted in.

Reply 9

AlexanderHam

Original post by Palmyra

True, one navy SEAL was killed because Trump wasn't present, imagine how many would have been killed if Trump actually was present.

Good point. I suppose it cuts both ways.

People inside the White House are leaking like sieves, they have admitted to journalists that Trump watches a lot of TV and that they have to bargain with him to get him to do his work and sign documents ("Now if you're a good little president and sign these four executive orders, you can watch two hours of TV").

They've also admitted that he often agrees with whoever was the last person to speak, and so the White House factions fight over who gets to stay with Trump after a meeting has finished (as that person's views will win).

If Trump's administration was mostly made up of men like General 'Mad Dog' Mattis, a true American hero and a first-class scholar, then it would be for the best that Trump was basically a figurehead who really doesn't have a clue what's going on and signs whatever is put in front of him. But given the malevolent influence of fascists like Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, it could be dangerous. And you do need a strong, decisive leader at the helm during times of crisis and danger, not the bureaucratic infighting that characterises the current administration.

Reply 10

2384911

Original post by joecphillips

Every time something bad happened he was playing golf

Hahaha it seemed so. :biggrin:

Reply 11

AlexanderHam

Original post by StormCommando

The raid encompassed 1 US loss vs 14 enemy losses. A trove of intel was captured. I would hesitate to call that a failure.

I wouldn't. Under the Obama administration's ISIS campaign, the exchange ratio of troops lost to enemies killed was 15,000 to 1. Only three soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Syria were lost, and 45,000 ISIS terrorists were killed.

It's true that operations are risky and soldiers will sometimes die. But we are supposed to honour our servicemen and women by doing everything we can to minimise the chances they will get killed, not treat their lives like trash by adopting a gung ho mentality and sending them precipitously.

If it was simply a risky mission and a soldier died, that would be tragic but acceptable. The whole point here is that people in the military are saying that his death was completely avoidable.

What would Trump have to do for you to criticise him?

Reply 12

AlexanderHam

Original post by AshEntropy

Hahaha it seemed so. :biggrin:

So you can't actually point to any real examples? Just made up?

Reply 13

Houthi5

USA can't make up their minds, they carrying out ops against Al-Qaida in one country and are supporting them covertly in another.

Reply 14

yudothis

Original post by Mathemagicien

You really want Trump to personally oversee each and every military operation?

You really have a lot of faith in the guy!

Actually high priority special forces ops he should at least be aware of when they happen. And then have the decency not to rant on his personal twitter.

Reply 15

AlexanderHam

Original post by Mathemagicien

Then why do people try to force good people out of the administration? For example, the Uber boss was forced out due to a boycott from consumers.

The Uber boss wasn't a member of the administration, he was on some advisory board. And I don't think anyone has tried to force Mattis out; he is widely (perhaps even universally* respected). I don't know what the forcing out of the Uber guy really has to do with the problems within the administration (Trump's obsession with the 24-hour news cycle, his apparent issues with applying himself to the work of the job and instead spending a lot of time watching TV, his tendency to basically just agree with whoever was the last person to speak which can be clearly seen on his u-turning on torture over and over again)

*If there are exceptions to the universality of that respect, it would be on the alt-reich; Mattis is highly skeptical of their beloved leader in the Kremlin.