President Trump’s successful operation to take out Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sent Democrats scrambling on Sunday, as several top party leaders had complained publicly in recent days that the White House had no “real plan” to combat the terror group following the U.S. pullout in Syria.
In a dramatic sign of how Democrats’ messaging apparently backfired, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” ran an ill-timed sketch suggesting that Trump had created “jobs” for ISIS — just hours before the president held a news conference announcing al-Baghdadi’s demise. The sketch aired around the time the two-hour late-night raid in northwest Syria was underway.
“It’s genuinely fascinating watching Democrats in real-time struggle to figure out what to say about this,” journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote on Sunday. “They want to be patriotic and anti-ISIS, but also need a way to malign Trump without contradicting their gushing Obama praise over [Usama bin Laden]: not an easy balancing act. Good luck!”
This aged well…
Here’s the ill-timed “Make ISIS Great Again” joke that SNL was trying to smear @realDonaldTrump with around the time Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed last night. pic.twitter.com/s61ZiikVp9
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) October 27, 2019
Through the day, the Democrats — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez and former Vice President Joe Biden — seemingly settled on a new strategy. They praised the troops who executed the historic raid, while pointedly avoiding complimenting the president in any way.
Congressional Democrats also lamented that they were not informed in advance of the operation, while the Russian military was told so that their airspace could be used. The president suggested Sunday that Democrats in Congress, who have been conducting an impeachment inquiry against him that has been fraught with leaked information to the media, were not notified before the raid because of concerns they might compromise the operation with leaks. – READ MORE