Conservative former Naval War College professor and writer for The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, had a blunt assessment of President Donald Trump's pie-in-the-sky dreams for the Iran war, as the president goes all in on a deal to end it that makes Iran considerably stronger than before everything started and left many of his own supporters furious.
MS NOW's Melissa Murray showed him a clip of Trump justifying the deal on the world stage, saying, "The alternative would be a worldwide depression. We run out of reserves in about four weeks. You know, there are reserves all over the world. And we would really run out. And there would be a time when you couldn't get it. And you would've seen bedlam."
Trump noted Murray is "basically saying that they had him by the collar. What did we gain from all of this? What was this for?"
Nichols argued that the president had a delusion that needed to be painfully brought back to earth.
"He really thought that he was going to collapse the Iranian regime and then walk through the streets of a free Tehran while they were dedicating a statue to him," said Nichols, a frequent critic of the administration. "I mean, I really think that this war was only about one man's search for glory."
Nobody forced Trump to go to war, Nichols noted. "It's not like the Iranians were within striking distance of a bomb. The Iranians were not about to launch a major operation. There was nothing that needed." Rather, Trump was just "on a sugar high from blowing up boats in the Caribbean and toppling the president of Venezuela. And he wasn't getting anywhere at home. His popularity was cratering, the economy was going in the wrong direction."
With all of those things together, said Nichols, he thought "a splendid little war in the Middle East where I emerge, the hero will be great. And now he's admitting, you know, they blackmailed me with the international economy, and I paid, and I'm paying the blackmail because I have to."
"You know, a lot of the points the president raised were good points," he added. "Probably should have thought of those about four months ago."