President Donald Trump's 80th birthday is this week and his claim that his birthday wish is "peace for the world" had people raising their eyebrows, especially considering it came after he threatened to bomb Iran again.
Earlier this week, Trump declared in a post on Truth Social that Iran's military "is a complete and total mess" and bragged that most of their forces have been "completely defeated," adding:
"The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!"
You can see his post below.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
When questioned about these remarks during a press conference in the Oval Office, Trump—who had just signed the Secure America Act that allots $70 billion for immigration enforcement—promised the U.S. military would resume its bombing campaign.
Trump suggested that the proposed bombing would be retaliation for a recent incident that prompted a U.S. rescue operation after an Apache helicopter went down. However, U.S. Central Command has not publicly determined whether the helicopter's loss resulted from an accident or hostile action by Iranian forces, leaving the cause of the incident unclear.
He said:
"We're going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard. ... We are, based on the attack on the helicopter, I guess we have a right to do that. They shot down a very incredible, actually a very incredible machine."
"At first they said they didn't do it, then they admitted they did, so it's sort of easy because we have the bomb. We actually have the bomb. We're very lucky the bomb didn't explode. That bomb was lodged in the helicopter but it didn't explode. It was on fire but it didn't explode."
You can hear what they said in the video below.
But just minutes later, Trump had this to say when a reporter asked what he wished for himself ahead of his 80th birthday:
"For my birthday? Well, I'll go a step bigger, okay? Peace for the world. Peace for the world. Middle East, yes. Peace for the whole world."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
These remarks make no sense given the fact that Trump hasn't done anything for world peace whatsoever.
In December, he was presented with FIFA's inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize,” an oversized gold medal trophy that, notably, arrived just months after he failed to secure a Nobel Peace Prize—and just after the U.S. Justice Department suddenly announced that it was dropping an international soccer bribery case.
The following month, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado faced heavy criticism after she gave her Nobel prize to Trump despite the Nobel Committee's insistence that prizes can't be transferred. Machado ignored the pushback and went to Washington anyway, saying she had done so "as a recognition for his [Trump's] unique commitment with our freedom."
These "recognitions" are as tone-deaf as you could possibly get. The war has raged for more than 100 days with no signs of stopping. And it certainly didn't help when, just two months ago, Trump threatened to bomb Iran "into the stone age" and made genocidal threats about ending an "entire civilization" that critics and legal scholars say amount to threatening war crimes.
Trump's words are irony at their finest.
Trump's remarks came after claiming on Meet the Press on Sunday that he "didn't guarantee no war" despite a long history of claiming there would be no new foreign "entanglements" abroad.
Trump described Iran's leaders as dangerous and unpredictable, saying that stopping their nuclear ambitions was a service to both the world and the United States. He framed the action as consistent with his "America First" approach, arguing that it protected U.S. interests rather than drawing the country into a new war.
Those sure don't sound like the statements of someone who's all in on world peace.
@thekalenallen/Threads
U.S. Mint
