
Maybe he’s looking at the portraits of Lyndon Johnson and Bush II hanging around the White House and realizing that Presidents who lie us into long, unwinnable wars pretty much get the shaft from history. He might also be self-aware enough to realize that Johnson and Bush had no particular reputation for lying, at least not much above the average for a political pro, until they told the whoppers they’ll be forever remembered for, whereas Trump has told over 10,000 public lies since he took the oath of office, if you believe the Washington Post.
Ha! Just kidding. Not about believing the Post, but about Trump being self-aware. Otherwise, he might have realized that wiping his ass with the treaty we signed with Iran one President ago, then handing it back to Iran and telling them, “You need to stick to this, anyway,” was not the most brilliant diplomatic ploy of this century. The best resolution of the whole conflict would be Trump luring the Iranians back into talks and getting them to sign a new treaty, probably slightly worse for the US than the old one, and giving Trump the chance to lie about it being a brilliant achievement of his.
You can almost hear the diplomatic back channel from North Korea to Iran humming with Kim Jong Un urging the ayatollahs, “Do it! It work for me!”
But Trump can’t go to war. It might actually cause him to lose his base.
Trumpanzees don’t mind Trump lying. They enjoy it. They know he’s not really against abortion and for Jesus. They just know that he really pisses off people who have college degrees, watch CNN and can get through the week without swallowing thirty OxyContin, and that’s enough for them to vote for him.
But they also have kids, if those kids haven’t accidentally shot each other dead already with the guns they have concealed in their sofa cushions, and they don’t want to send those kids to fight in another Middle Eastern war. They’ve already done that, and got them back with missing pieces or enough PTSD so that they have to live under a tarp in the woods in between trips to the VA hospital.
Trump can lie to them about building walls, jailing Hillary and not laundering money for Putin’s pals all he wants, and it’s just like tickling their tummies, because they know those lies really rile up us California types who think they are a bunch of drug-addled, Confederate flag-waving, homophobic yick-a-doos. But Trump can’t lie them into a war. Plenty of their kids are already in the armed forces and have made great sacrifices to be there, like finishing high school and quitting crystal meth for a month to pass the drug screen. And while the base may want to own the libs, they DO NOT want their young’uns blown up by an IED just get that done.
Trump may actually realize this. For sure, the Iranians do.