What did Donald Trump do today?

He said the deaths of four Americans in Iran "wasn't very impactful."

Trump had this exchange with reporters aboard Air Force One today:

Q: President Zelenskyy says Russia is giving Iran satellite imagery of US bases in the Gulf to help them target. What can you do about that?

TRUMP: Well, we'll find out if that's true. I'll ask Putin. We'll find out.

[crosstalk]

TRUMP: It hasn't had much impact, because we've knocked the hell out of them. …They may be giving, but—uh, if they are, it hasn't worked out, because they have no army, they have no air force, they have no navy, they have no nothing. So it hasn't worked out—I don't think, I don't think they've been doing it, certainly not at a high level. And if they have, it hasn't been very impactful.

The strikes over the past two weeks that Trump called "not very impactful" by the supposedly nonexistent Iranian military killed four American soldiers and injured dozens more.

Zelenskyy has offered proof, although there's very little doubt about the truth of the allegations. Russia is a geopolitical ally of Iran and has a particular interest in extending Trump's war on Iran as long as possible. Unlike the United States, Russia's desperately degraded economy really does rely on oil sales to stay afloat, and the higher prices caused by Iran's blockade of the Persian Gulf have helped the Putin regime enormously. 

 

Bogging the United States down also helps Russia in its war against Ukraine. With the United States' own supply of critical munitions getting dangerously low, there are fewer available for Ukraine. The Defense Department has already said it won't be able to supply Ukraine with weapons Congress has already authorized until a date in 2029 that, coincidentally or not, is after Trump's second term will end.

Trump is personally, financially, and politically beholden to Vladimir Putin, and is in effect on the opposite side of the Russia-Ukraine conflict from the rest of the United States. He didn't say when he'd "ask" Putin if Russia helped kill American troops, but it wouldn't be the first time Trump has excused attempts by the Putin regime to do just that. In 2020, he blew off credible intelligence reports that Russia was paying bounties on the murder of American troops in Afghanistan, and then pretended nobody had told him about them.

Why does this matter?

• Nobody who thinks the deaths of American servicemembers isn't "impactful" is fit to command them. 

• A president who can't stand up to a hostile power helping to kill Americans isn't fit for office.