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Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday, though they didn’t have much of an impact: Defense systems thwarted the attack, and no one was killed.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump did what he always does: He blamed his own country, while claiming the violence wouldn’t have occurred if he were in the White House. The Hill reported:
Former President Trump on Saturday ripped into President Biden over Iran’s recent attack against Israel, arguing it would not be occurring if were still in the Oval Office. “I want to say God bless the people of Israel — they’re under attack right now,” Trump said Saturday during a rally in Schnecksville, Penn. “That’s because we show great weakness. This would not happen.”
Oddly enough, during the event, Trump tried to say that the United States shows “great weakness,” but he ended up saying “great weaknicks.”
In any event, the former president continued to push the same line via his social media platform, and assorted Republicans who want to be his running mate echoed the rhetoric, suggesting Iran wouldn’t dare launch offenses like these under Trump’s leadership.
In reality, either the presumptive GOP nominee and his allies have very short memories, or they’re counting on the public to have very short memories.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, I’m reminded of a New York Times report from a few months ago that explained, “In fact, Iran and its proxies did attack American and allied interests during Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
In March 2020, for example, two American service members and a British soldier were killed in a rocket attack on a military base in Iraq, and the U.S. believed Iran-backed militia groups were most likely behind the assault. A few months earlier, a barrage of rockets killed an American contractor and wounded four American service members in Kirkuk, Iraq.
NBC News reported in September 2020, in the months that followed, militia groups — believed to be backed by Iran — continued to target U.S. military bases, and the frequency of those attacks increased throughout Trump’s final year in the White House.
What’s more, let’s also not forget that in January 2020, an Iranian missile strike left several dozen of U.S. troops with traumatic brain injuries. Trump dismissed the importance of the injuries — the Republican called them little more than “headaches“ — prompting Veterans of Foreign Wars to ask the then-president to apologize for minimizing what had happened to the troops.
Trump ignored the VFW’s appeal.
My point is not to blame Trump for the attacks that occurred on his watch. Rather, my point is that when Trump tries to blame his own country’s leaders for foreign violence, and says such violence would “never” happen if he were in office, we know this is ugly and unnecessary nonsense, intended to persuade people who don’t remember what happened just four years ago.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.