YouTube Video Turns Trump Into Hillary

After months of campaigning against intervention into Syria, President Trump suddenly changed his mind and fired 59 Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian airbase near Homs. Trump was reportedly so deeply moved by a YouTube video showing the victims of a chemical weapsons attack that he suddenly broke from his campaign pronouncements against getting involved in the country’s six-year civil war.

The sudden reversal has many Trump supporters wondering who exactly is the man they voted for. He ran as a non-interventionist, claiming that the Iraq war was a mistake and that launching air strikes into Syria would not only be foolish, but would require congressional approval.

But now Trump is behaving more like Hillary and the Washington establishment he ran against than the non-interventionist outsider he presented himself as during the campaign.

So many are asking if the Trump campaign was simply a large-scale, highly-deceptiive advertising campaign run by a candidate who never actually believed a word he said. With the help of polling specialists using sophisticated computer modeling, he was told what the electorate wanted to hear and he aptly delivered the words that resonated with those voters. But many voters now believe that his entire campaign may have been nothing more than empty rhetoric void of sincerity, like a late-night TV commercial making promises about a cheap cutlery set named Ginsu.

In some ways, perhaps, his supporters got what they deserved. They supported a candidate who seemed to have little or no ideological bent, no history of supporting the causes he was suddenly promoting, and came off many times during the campaign as quick-tempered, petty, and impulsive.

In all fairness, though, it wasn’t like Trump supporters, the ones who gravitated to his campaign because of his America First message, had much of a choice in the matter. Hillary represented the War Party, the beltway establishment that supported every war and military intervention that came their way. Sanders  had already been eliminated by a corrupt and rigged Democratic primary system and third party candidate Gary Johnson wasn’t polling high enough to be a viable alternative.

So Trump, by distinguishing himself from the pro-war candidates in his own Republican party and from his general election foe Hillary–who never saw a war she didn’t love–was able to draw support from voters in both parties who were tired of perpetual war and intervention, especially in the Middle East. They wanted someont who would say no to the war hawks and focus on problems here at home. Their satisfaction at seeing him elected, however, was short-lived. The attack on Syria has ended the honeymoon.

But how does a candidate change his mind so dramatically on an issue is so short a time. Just months prior to his decision to bomb the air bases in Syria, Trump had warned how foolish and dangerous it would be to do so.

Theories abound among many Trump supporters to explain how this non-interventionist could have betrayed his own campaign promise against intervening in Syria, especially in such an impulsive and knee-jerk manner. Was he compromised by the neocons in his cabinet? Did the Deep State force him to carry out the attacks under threat of blackmail? Did pro-war congressional members threaten him with impeachment if he didn’t go along with their thrist for another war in the Mideast? Did he get Gorsuch confirmed in exchange for launchng the attack in a quid pro quo with the hawks in Congress?

The extreme nature of such theories says more about the disbelief and disappointment among those who feel he betrayed them, than the liklihood of their reality.

But the question still remains: Who is the real Donald Trump? We should be finding out the answer to that question as the conflict in Syria becomes even more complicated and dangerous.