MAGA bus rolls over Gabbard, Carlson

Noah Rothman writes for National Review Online about President Donald Trump’s apparent turn against two erstwhile allies.

They say that politicians will always disappoint you. They’re even more likely to disappoint you if you reconstruct your entire identity around a contrived version of a politician that exists mostly in your own head.

That is the cautionary tale that Tulsi Gabbard has made of herself. When it comes to Israel’s war to neutralize the Iranian nuclear program, the president’s director of national intelligence is on an island.

According to the sources that spoke with CNN, a recent assessment that purportedly synthesized the U.S. intelligence community’s observations maintained that “not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing.” That conveniently comports with Gabbard’s own views. …

… In regard to the dispute between Gabbard’s intelligence community and everyone else in relation to Iran’s race to a fissionable device, Trump sided definitively with everyone else. “I don’t care what she said,” the president said curtly of his own DNI. “I think they were very close to having them.”

Gabbard isn’t the only member of MAGA’s imaginative constructivist wing to find herself cast unceremoniously under the bus by the movement’s avatar. Gabbard wasn’t asking for that sort of treatment, but erstwhile Fox News host Tucker Carlson certainly was.

Carlson and his ideological allies joined Gabbard in the effort to seed a pliant press with dubious allegations against Iran’s critics — particularly those who promoted the wholly uncontroversial notion that, before last Thursday, Iran was a threshold nuclear state. Carlson himself predicted that a parade of horribles would flow from an Israeli attack on Iran. …

… “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,” the president posted on his social media venue. Trump has spent days bristling over Carlson’s increasingly caustic criticisms of his administration, America’s allies, and the U.S. citizens who believe an Iranian nuclear breakout is an unacceptable outcome.

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