Wednesday morning, “deal maker” Donald Trump announced he was going to resume attacking Iran “very hard.” It’s hard to know if it was his own idea or whether he was just listening to his favorite advisors, Fox News talking heads. As Media Matters has reported, Fox was pushing Trump to go to war against Iran before the conflict started and "selling Trump the fantasy that he could defeat Iran in 'two weeks.'"
Trump launched new bombings Tuesday and later on Wednesday. But that did not seem to be enough to satisfy Fox News’ blood lust, at least not enough for “straight news” host John Roberts. He got to work pushing Trump to further escalate the unnecessary and unpopular war.
First, Roberts mocked Trump for saying for weeks that Iran is on the ropes and that he was close to a deal. But instead of pushing for an actual deal, Roberts pushed the Fan-in-Chief to ditch the cease fire and bomb, bomb, bomb Iran even more.
Via Media Matters:
ROBERTS: A lot of military experts we've talked to think it's long past time for the United States to go back to full-scale war against Iran, saying nine weeks ago we had Iran on the ropes, and ever since then President Trump has been talking about this elusive deal.
...That's nine weeks of "we're close to a deal." At some point you've got to acknowledge it's not happening.
Guest Brit Hume called it “a bit of a mystery” as to “where we are.” Then he quickly added, “Certainly it is the case that our generals and some external experts [such as Fox News'] Jack Keane … believe that there was a lot of unfinished business at the time we went into the cease fire and that it’s time we go ahead and finish that business and see where we are once that’s done.”
“Well, we’ll see what happens,” Roberts said, beginning to close the discussion. But he got in one more hawkish dig: “It seems as though it’s just defensive or self-defensive retaliatory strikes going on right now. We’ll see if it broadens out at all.”
Oddly, opinion host Jesse Watters was more circumspect on Tuesday, perhaps reflecting a divide at the propaganda network. Watters echoed the “a lot of people want to see the job finished” line. But he added, “others think that, you know, we’re pretty close. But what do we know?”
What we know is that Iran was abiding by President Obama’s nuclear deal when Trump ripped it up. We also know that gas prices are soaring thanks to Trump’s needless war; inflation just reached a three-year high and Trump not only doesn’t care, he declared, “I love the inflation.”
