President Donald Trump’s insane reasoning behind his unhinged social media threats against Iran has been revealed in a Wall Street Journal report.
Regarding his profanity-laden Easter Sunday post, where the president ended his calls for Iran to “Open the f--kin’ Strait” with “Praise be to Allah,” Trump, 79, told one White House adviser he wanted to appear as unstable and insulting as possible because it was “a language the Iranians would understand,” the newspaper reported on Saturday.
However, the president was worried about how it came across, reportedly asking advisers, “How’s it playing?”
The reasoning was similar when he issued a terrifying threat two days later, on April 7, that “a whole civilization will die tonight” as a way to “scare the Iranians and to end the conflict,” advisers told the Journal.
Administration officials told the outlet that Trump’s aggressive bravado and projected instability were not part of any national security plan, but rather an improvisational effort by the president to bring Iran to the negotiating table.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State, reportedly told others behind the scenes that Trump’s strategy might influence Iran to negotiate, the outlet reported.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House and the State Department for comment.
On April 7, Trump instilled fear across the world as he threatened Iran with total annihilation in a Truth Social post.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote. Just 90 minutes before the deadline to his ultimatum, Trump backed down and announced a fragile two-week ceasefire.
The president has not handled the war particularly well, according to the Journal’s report.
White House insiders told the Rupert Murdoch publication that Trump threw an hours-long tantrum after he learned that two American pilots had gone missing after they were downed in Iran.
His meltdown turned so severe that aides barred him from the room where the rescue operation was being coordinated, and he was instead briefed separately at intervals, officials told the paper.
The president had reportedly already been worrying about repeating the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis and the failed rescue mission that cost President Jimmy Carter his reelection bid.
“If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter…with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election,” Trump said in March, according to the newspaper. “What a mess.”
Trump’s approval among Americans has been floundering since his war on Iran began nearly two months ago.
An NBC News poll published on Sunday found that 63 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance overall, with 50 percent strongly disapproving. The poll found that only one-third of Americans believe that Trump is handling the war with Iran well.
