CNN’s New Day Takes on Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Iran Threat: ‘When He’s Embarrassed’ He ‘Looks For a Distraction’
As CNN’s New Day covered President Donald Trump‘s explosive late-night tweet threatening Iran, the morning show concluded: this is a means to distract from his terrible week.
Trump issued this dire threat to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani late Sunday night:
To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018
New Day co-host Alisyn Camerota pointed out that Trump predicted multiple times during the Obama presidency that the former president would attack Iran to help him politically.
“Is this a distraction of some kind?” she asked guest Max Boot.
The conservative writer said Trump is a “master of distraction,” and that if any other president had tweeted the same threats to Iran, “you’d think he’d probably belong in a padded cell.”
“I don’t want to go full ‘Wag the Dog’, but we know that the president’s strategy… he’s employed it over and over, we’d be foolish not to absorb it and recognize that.” Camerota said. “When he’s embarrassed, as he was last week, he always looks for a distraction.”
“It’s a half-wag,” co-host John Berman joked.
The tweet was “really about war,” CNN’s John Avlon said, adding that there’s a contradiction in Trump getting cozy with Russia, which supports Iran in Syria.
Boot agreed that Trump’s harsh rhetoric aimed at the Iranian president further highlights Trump’s “subservience to Putin.”
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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