Left Blames Trump for Iran Attack on U.S. Troops

Anti-war protest (Alex Wroblewski / Getty)
Alex Wroblewski / Getty
Joel B. Pollak

Democrats, celebrities, and left-wing commentators blamed President Donald Trump for Iran’s missile attack on bases hosting U.S. soldiers in Iraq on Tuesday evening.

Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic surface-to-surface missiles from its own territory that hit at least two bases in Iraq, in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) Quds Force, last week.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) set the tone when she accused Trump of “needless provocations” — as news of the attacks was still pouring in — and suggested the U.S. lacked the will and ability to fight.

CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta also blamed Trump, telling Don Lemon: “Yeah, ‘All is well,’ is the message from the president. I doubt that there are very many people in the nation’s capital who agree with that assessment. All is not well tonight, Don. And I think the president understands that as well. I think he’s trying to turn down the temperature that, frankly, he cranked all the way up, and he’ been doing this for several days now.”

Comedian and commentator Dean Obeidallah had a similar analysis, blaming Republicans in general:

Left-wing film director Michael Moore blamed Trump for starting a war that Iran began with repeated attacks:

Rob Reiner agreed:

Novelist Stephen King was characteristically concise:

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted that Trump had “failed”:

Ben Rhodes, former national security aide to President Barack Obama, and one of the chief promoters of the Iran nuclear deal — which allowed Iran to continue developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles — tweeted that “this didn’t need to happen,” implying that Trump was responsible for the attack because of the airstrike on Soleimani:

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the defunct Iran nuclear deal, blamed Trump for using what he called “confrontation” rather than diplomacy:

Most leading Democratic presidential candidates were more circumspect:

Others were less so. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) sent a fundraising email with the subject, “Tulsi saw this coming.” It asked: “Will you stand with Tulsi against Trump’s unconstitutional war? For every donation of $35 or more to this email today, we will send you a ‘No War With Iran’ t-shirt, the proceeds of which will go towards spreading Tulsi’s critical anti-war message in the early states.” It was not clear whether the email was composed before or after the attacks.

This is a developing story.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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