No, Trump isn’t suddenly concerned with Assad’s war crimes
Sarah Kendzior is a St. Louis, Mo.-based commentator who writes about politics, the economy and media
At a July 2016 campaign rally in South Carolina, Donald Trump defended Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons. “Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, ‘Oh, he’s using gas!’” he said mockingly. “He was a bad guy, really bad guy, but you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good.”
The compliment was not an anomaly: Mr. Trump likes dictators. He liked them during the campaign, when he defended Gadhafi and quoted Mussolini, and he liked them after he became President, lavishing praise on Erdogan, Duterte, and, of course, Putin.
Mr. Trump’s condemnation of Bashar al-Assad is both disingenuous and self-serving. His sudden concern over chemical weapons is as contrived as it was last year, when under a similar firestorm of scandal Trump launched strikes into Syria in an operation that did nothing for Syrians but plenty for Mr. Trump, winning him praise from gullible pundits who deemed him “presidential” overnight.
Within days, Mr. Assad went back to slaughtering civilians, and Mr. Trump went back to pathologically lying.
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