He also expressed his disdain for the obligatory nod to US sanctimony, when he responded to Joe Scarborough's complaint about Putin killing people: "I think our country does plenty of killing also," and when he pushed back on George Stephanopoulos regarding Ukraine: "The people of Crimea"would rather be with Russia than where they were."
These kinds of thoughts are anathema to hawkish Republicans. They could only be ignored because they assumed: 1) he wasn't going to win, 2) it was empty campaign rhetoric, and 3) as President, he would be boxed in and managed by the shepherds of the national-security state. Only one of those assumptions turned out to be entirely false, and it's the uncertainty about how the other two are now playing out that might undermine his support among Senate Republicans.
In the last few months, Trump has made decisions either to reduce US military presence or explicitly not to take military action that was expected and planned. These were rhetorically and substantively anti-interventionist positions that are anathema to imperialist Republicans. The most consequent of these in the impeachment context are those regarding Iran, and, relatedly, Syria.
The dangerous fuse of Republican discontent with Trump was lit with Trump's decision in June to call off the military strike on Iran, after Iran's downing of a US drone. That event followed attacks on Norwegian and Japanese tankers in the Persian Gulf that the US government blamed on Iran. A narrative had been established for US politicians and media: Every nasty thing that happens in the Middle East is to be blamed on Iran. It's a narrative with a specific target and a specific goal: to manufacture consent for a military attack on that target-Iran-when a good opportunity was either concocted or presented itself.
Iran's acknowledged destruction of a valuable US military asset provided that opportunity. Trump's decision-on the profound advice of Bolton, Pompeo, et. al.-to launch an attack on Iran was the inevitable next scene in the script. His decision, made a few hours later, to cancel the attack was something else again. It was a decision made "without consulting his vice president, secretary of state or national security adviser," with "forces" already in motion" more than 10,000 sailors and airmen".on the move," and with "only 10 minutes to go." Per the NYT, that decision " stunned," "flabbergasted," and outraged his closest advisers and key Republican allies. It was an unprecedented deus ex machina, an impermissible interruption that, especially for Republicans, just doesn't fit in the epic story of American "presidentialness."
Leftish Trump opponents have not, I think, recognized what an extraordinary, important, and praiseworthy decision this was by Trump. Has there been a more positive decision of such consequence made by any president in the last thirty years?
Yes, it was the reversal of a prior, terrible decision of his. And, yes, it's subject to reversal again because of his inconsistency and his many other terrible decisions regarding Iran and the region. But on its own, it stopped an onslaught of immense destruction. That it was a reversal of something he had set in motion only makes it more extraordinary as a presidential act.
Moreover, Trump was not alone in the process of re-thinking his decision. The Washington Post tells us that, from the get-go, the decision to strike Iran had "divided his top advisers, with senior Pentagon officials opposing the decision to strike and national security adviser John Bolton strongly supporting it." And during those hours of reconsideration, as the NYT reports: "there continued to be pushback from Pentagon civilians and General Dunford."
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