Grotesquely tone deaf. How else to judge Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of Trump’s threat to wipe out “a whole civilization” in Iran? She said, right out in public, “I think it was a very, very strong threat from the president … that led the Iranian regime to cave to their knees and ask for a ceasefire and agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.”
Never mind that it’s lies from beginning to end. Just consider how Iran’s regime leaders must have reacted. For decades now, they have kept everyone who might oppose them in Iran on their knees, and have viciously struck down efforts at dissent just recently yet again. Words like Leavitt’s, broadcast throughout the world, can get no response but doubling down against any opposition.
There’s more. How the message was sent – mostly to feed the deluded MAGA base, of course – is not as bad as the what of it: threatened war crimes. Ravings like these, from the sitting president of the most powerful country in the world, carry immense weight. They are, in fact, an action, according to both national and international law. We may have heard on the playground, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me,” but anybody who’s paid attention knows how words can crush a vulnerable child or unwitting but clueless rival so badly that the damage lasts a lifetime, even robbing the victim of their sense of self, their very humanity. It’s virtual murder. For our sake, as well as for others, we cannot stand for it, even for a moment.
What will it take for Republicans and/or conservatives to excise the cancer? How long will it take?