Earlier today, it was announced that one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US military raid in Syria. Of course, this is a huge deal, not only for us as Americans, but for those affected in the Middle East as well. Because of the fact that this is kind of a big deal, I am not too fond of the ways President Trump addressed the situation.
I am going to preface this with the following: I do not hate Trump. I do not like him very much, and I do not think he is fit to be our president at all, but I also recognize that he deserves to at least have a little bit of respect, because he is still our president and I try to be a decent human most of the time. That being said, I am not writing this to hate on him for anything, I just want to highlight how unprofessional and clueless he often seems, even in this situation.
If you follow Trump on Twitter or are even just up to date on current events, you may notice that he does not have the largest vocabulary, or at least doesn’t use one. He also tends to use a lot of filler words and words that are exaggeratory, such as very, totally, and so on, likely to fill up space, make his statements and speeches longer, and to make himself sound smarter than he is. I find it hard to take him seriously because of this, especially when talking about how al-Baghdadi’s body was identified with “immediate” and “totally positive” tests. I am no scientist and I do not do research that involves testing anything, but I would never call any tests that I would ever run “totally positive.” I think it makes it sound fake, and this definitely sounds like something Trump would say to make himself sound smarter.
In addition, I think Trump could have been a little bit more respectful of the situation. Yes, al-Baghdadi was not the greatest person, and yes it is a step in the right direction that he has been killed, but he was still human and his death still deserves respect. The way that Trump described his death, by saying that the final moments were spent “in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.” While this may have been actually true, there is no way for Trump to know this for a fact. He was not there, and even if he was, how would he have known? He likely said this for dramatic effect, to make it look like big bad America did something so scary and everyone else should look out. The news article linked above even said that Trump “described in sometimes brutal terms how Baghdadi died.” No matter who it is, I would most definitely not be describing brutal details of someone’s death.
All of this just goes to show the type of president we have. No hate, I am just trying to share the facts and look a little bit deeper into the reaction of Trump and his statements to the public about al-Baghdadi’s death.