Ben Rhodes

Trump is treated differently.

This is not a new insight.

We have to stop treating him differently.

He's the president of the United States of America.

Whether he's Donald Trump or somebody else, he told people to rise up and he said help would be on its way.

And let's not forget the pageantry of that week.

You've got Lindsey Graham flying around Air Force One with Make Iran Great Again hats.

You've got like the Shah's son out there.

Like he was conveying a ramp up to Iranians and then he did a rug pull on them.

Yeah.

But then you shouldn't have encouraged them that way.

You should have found other ways to show solidarity, other ways to call out the regime, other ways to mobilize other countries to impose certain consequences or to try to help support Iranian protesters in whatever way you can, whether it's provision of internet or getting their stories out or whatever way.

But don't suggest you're going to go to war and then pull back

in the middle of the crackdown.

I mean, the absurdity of this thing is this guy lives in a consequence-free world because nobody will ever tell him to his face that what he did was wrong.

But, like, the climb down was so clumsy.

He thanked the Iranian regime for not executing their own people.

And it was like one person was going to get hanged and then they called and were like, and by the way...

I this terrible regime.

But to the point about not capitulating, they did their crackdown in his face.