Monday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” host Ari Melber accused President Donald Trump of using the tensions with Iran to create the “appearance of a problem” so that he can “solve it.”
Melber said, “I begin with the Donald Trump whiplash, a sudden policy change after days of bluster.”
He continued, “We’ve seen the same pattern in play in those big promised ICE raids the president walked back. For the raids it was a governing threat timed to add heat to his 2020 kickoff, using the power of ICE and the Feds to hype his own campaign roll out on immigration. By this weekend, Donald Trump all but admitted that was essentially a head fake, part of this pattern of head fakes. And this is important to understand the Iran news tonight because sometimes you have a president literally creating the appearance of a problem so that he alone can solve it.”
He added, “So Trump gets the red meat to the base, then knowingly not acting on the planned threat. Now, a lot of people, let’s be clear, think it’s a very good thing that we’re not at war with Iran today, or there wasn’t an extra strike. A lot of the humanitarians and other immigration folks we talk to say if these ICE arrests didn’t happen, that’s a good thing. And in the markets there were a lot of people excited there weren’t new tariff wars. But what are we to do with all of this, especially when you have a president deliberately stoking chaos and fear to position himself to be the one to relieve it, but, of course, only momentarily, I can tell you that the president on the ICE Raids is asking Congress to act within a few weeks, or he says he’ll act again. Is that another head fake?”
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