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riversedge

(70,077 posts) Sat Sep 12, 2020, 09:54 AM Sep 2020

Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in 'childish' Trump's foreign policy.................

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Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in 'childish' Trump's foreign policy

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/10/donald-trump-bob-woodward-iran-qassem-suleimani-golf

On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency, book says
Donald Trump speaks as the former defense secretary James Mattis looks on in 2017.

Julian Borger in Washington

Last modified on Thu 10 Sep 2020 20.34 EDT

Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president..................................

..................The president also expressed pride in his relationship with Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who in October 2019 persuaded Trump to announce a troop withdrawal from north-eastern Syria, abandoning America’s Kurdish allies, who had taken the lead in the fight against Isis.

The decision was the last straw for an outraged Mattis.

“When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world, and everything else. That’s when I quit,” the former defence secretary said.

Mattis predicted Trump’s impact on the country would be lasting.

“This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible. Truth is no longer governing the White House statements,” he said.

Coats, the former intelligence director, fired in July 2019 while he was playing golf on one of Trump’s courses, came to a similar conclusion.

“To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks,” Coats said. “He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”