Jen Psaki
π€ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
But the president, who spent the last few weeks boasting about our control over Iranian airspace, seems almost unbothered by the whole thing.
His first public comment didn't come until 3.20 p.m., hours after the news broke, and it came in the form of a four-word social media post.
He said, quote, keep the oil, anyone?
End quote.
So American troops were in the middle of a rescue mission for a soldier stuck behind enemy lines, and Trump was casually musing about taking Iranian oil like someone at brunch ordering fries for the table.
Oil, anyone?
Trump then went on to give a series of short phone interviews in which he repeatedly brushed aside the implications of this crisis.
He told NBC News that he didn't think any of this would affect his negotiations with Iran and complained about news coverage of the rescue operation.
He was later asked by The Independent what he'd do if the missing crew member is captured or harmed by Iran.
He told the outlet, well, I can't comment on it because we hope that's not going to happen.
And he ended the call shortly thereafter.
Trump's flippant attitude about this very serious situation is galling, but it's completely consistent with the way that he's treated this entire war, which, incidentally, he's tried very hard to avoid calling a war because legally he'd have to get congressional approval for a war.
Ever since the day Trump launched this war from his Florida beach club wearing a trucker hat, he's treated it like a video game.
His administration has released a series of highly offensive propaganda videos that they reportedly call banger memes.
They splice together real footage of American airstrikes with sports footage, with video game footage, even clips of SpongeBob SquarePants.
And Trump has insisted on talking about the war like it's a golf trip or a weekend getaway, repeatedly and purposefully calling it an excursion.
We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil.
A little bit of an excursion over the last two weeks.
This is an excursion, a little excursion.
But we're doing this excursion.