For those who think that Donald Trump is thinking about issues, think again. From his utterances [let’s not dignify them by calling them “statements”] and early-morning bedside tweets, one can only conclude that no thought goes into his “pronouncements.” He merely stumbles from one shiny-object issue to the next, cribbing his remarks from whatever Trump TV has said, and garbling even that. Clearly, he does not actually understand what he is talking about, and we see that most vividly in his rambling, incoherent attempts to Trump-splain his latest policy lurch.
With that as an introduction, here is the complete [mercifully short] transcript of Trump’s attempt at an answer about US policy regarding Syria, from his joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, on April 24, 2018. It seems as though he and Macron did have a discussion about Syria, from which Trump may have picked up a few phrases to sprinkle in as a way of trying to sound knowledgeable. [What, by the way, is “open season to the Mediterranean?”] But I have no idea what he is trying to say. Do you? Does he?
As far as Syria is concerned, I would love to get out. I would love to bring our incredible warriors back home. They’ve done a great job; we’ve essentially just absolutely obliterated ISIS in Iraq, and in Syria. And we’ve done a big favor to neighboring countries, frankly, but we’ve also done a favor for our country.
With that being said, Emmanuel and myself have discussed the fact that we don’t want to give Iran open season to the Mediterranean, especially since we really control it to a large extent. We really have controlled it, and we’ve set control on it.
So we’ll see what happens. But we’re going to be coming home relatively soon. We finished, at least almost, our work with respect to ISIS in Syria, ISIS in Iraq. And we have done a job that nobody has been able to do. With that being said, I do want to come home, but I want to come home also with having accomplished what we have to accomplish.