Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Trump’s Syria strike, while widely praised in the mainstream media, drew significant backlash from the president’s populist base. Now, five weeks later, Trump’s first foreign trip has ushered in a new wave of criticism from his core group of supporters.
One week after the military action, British Infowars vlogger Paul Joseph Watson was joined on his Infowars show by Jack Posobiec, director at Citizens for Trump, where he explained why he’d jumped “Off the Trump train” the week prior.
“400,000 Syrians had died in this civil war over the past six years before the chemical weapons attack,” he told Posobiec. “Assad had been killing his own people for six years… it’s a civil war; that’s what happens.”
Watson also noted that at a news conference in the Turkish capital, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asserted on March 30 that the Syrian people would determine Assad’s fate.
“What changed one week later?” Watson asked. “The only thing I can see is Bannon being demoted.”
Posobiec’s answer: “A fundamental shift within the administration.”
“It’s a fundamental shift basically with him out of the picture, and with [National Security Adviser] H.R. McMaster now there,” he explained. “H.R. McMaster is tied to [former director of the Central Intelligence Agency] David Petraeus… [and] a lot of people that were involved with the Obama administration and the Bush administration, so having these people in there allows for them to create a way where they can feed Trump any assessments, any intel they want without any conflicting views.”
According to Mike Cernovich, Trump isn’t draining the swamp, he’s drowning in it. And the Pizzagate-pushing conspiracy theorist also attributes Trump’s shift to McMaster.
“More war is coming, and I don’t know how to tell you the swamp is drowning Trump,” he lamented.
On the other hand, there’s been no shortage of ominous moments from Trump’s first foreign trip, which kicked off with a record arms deal with Saudi Arabia ($110 billion) on Saturday.
“I think it was a bad idea to go to Saudi Arabia,” Infowars commentator David Knight announced Monday. He then drew on some of the eerie symbolism viewers may have missed.
President Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi were “all standing there holding this orb with our hands on it,” Knight explained. “Everybody’s having a lot of fun with that picture, because they look pretty bad when they’re lit from the bottom… but what nobody is paying attention to is that that was all part of a ceremony about setting up a global organization.”
Of course, the symbolism was not lost on everyone. As Vox summed up:
Think about it for a second: This is Donald Trump — the guy who campaigned on banning Muslim immigration to the United States and replacing “globalism” in foreign policy with “America First” — literally holding a globe surrounded by Muslims. That’s absurd!
“I think he’s not being very well served by the people who planned this trip,” Knight added, turning to what he believed was the worst photo-op; a sword dance with the Saudis and administration officials.
“I hope that… when they take these swords for the photo opportunities, that they’ve wiped the blood off of them,” Knight said, referencing beheadings. “When you shake hands with people like that, sometimes you get blood on your hands, and we may wind up with blood on our hands in terms of this big arm deal, but of course [Trump’s son-in-law] Jared Kushner was at the center of that.”
Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.
This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.
