The cruise missiles struck, and many in the mainstream media fawned.
“I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,” declared Fareed Zakaria on CNN
.. Brian Williams, on MSNBC, seemed mesmerized by the images of the strikes provided by the Pentagon. He used the word “beautiful” three times and alluded to a Leonard Cohen lyric — “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons” — without apparent irony.
.. Why do so many in the news media love a show of force?
.. “There is no faster way to bring public support than to pursue military action,” said Ken Paulson, head of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center.
.. News organizations that are fearful of looking partisan can fall into the trap of failing to provide context.”
.. News organizations that are fearful of looking partisan can fall into the trap of failing to provide context.”
‘I’m officially off the Trump Train’: Trump’s online base is furious about the Syria strikes
Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones’s Infowars — both have earned praise from President Trump or those close to him in the recent past — promoted a conspiracy theory all day Thursday that blamed the U.S. deep state for a suspected nerve agent attack Tuesday in Syria, and not the Assad regime. Infowars called the attack a “false flag” meant to force the United States into a war.
.. There’s plenty of evidence that Trump reads and values conspiracy-theory sites like Infowars, and Cernovich himself appears to have some readers in the Trump administration.
American strikes against Syria prompt both praise and condemnation
Democrats warned that President Trump will need to seek their approval if he strikes Assad again or tries to escalate American involvement in the war.
“Unilateral military action by the U.S. in a Middle East conflict causes grave concern given the lack of any Authorization for Use of Military Force from Congress and the absence of any long-term plan or strategy,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
.. The strikes approved by Trump did not target the Syrian regime leadership or seek to significantly weaken its capabilities to wage war. Instead they focused exclusively on the remote and relatively spartan air base that was used to launch the chemical attack on Tuesday.
.. Nikki Haley had tough words criticizing both Russia and Iran for their actions and their failure to stop the Assad regime from killing Syrian civilians. “Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency,” Haley said, “Russia has stood beside him.”
.. Russian forces in Syria did not attempt to use their advanced air defense systems to shoot down the U.S. missiles or harass U.S. planes operating in Syrian airspace as part of the larger fight against the Islamic State.
.. Russians, who are growing weary of the Syrian conflict and Assad, might not entirely object to the strikes. “Russia has had a very hard time getting Assad to come to the negotiating table in any meaningful way,
.. the Syrian government called the attack on Shayrat airfield an “unjust and arrogant aggression” that killed nine civilians, including four children.
.. Iran is also backing Shiite rebels in Yemen, where the United States is stepping up its own military activities.
.. “Iran has the luxury of choice because they have a number of theaters in which to act and proxies willing to do so,”
Syria strike adds awkward twist to high-stakes China-U.S. summit
China does not want the U.S. military taking unilateral action in Syria. Beijing has long said it prefers a multilateral approach, though over the course of six brutal years of war it has repeatedly used its veto power to vote with Russia against United Nations Security Council resolutions on Syria ..
.. a call for sanctions over the use of chemical weapons.
.. Xi does not like surprises. Top Chinese leaders exist in a world where public appearances are tightly choreographed, the press is controlled and protocol is paramount. During the weeks of planning and negotiation that went into the Mar-a-Lago summit, every interaction and angle would have been discussed — from the handshake, to media availability, to the possibility of a rogue Trump tweet.
.. On Thursday night, conservative U.S. media painted the Syria hit as a bold but calculated warning. “He’s sending a message to the Chinese,”
.. Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone, also saw the move as a projection of strength. In an editorial, the paper said Trump launched the strike “to establish his authority as the U.S. president.”