It’s bad enough that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing in the Trump administration. When the right hand picks up a hatchet and begins whacking away at the left hand, that’s a whole different problem.
President Donald Trump contradicted his own secretary of state on Friday, hours after Rex Tillerson called on Gulf states to ease their blockade on Qatar.
“We call on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt to ease the blockade against Qatar,” Tillerson said. “There are humanitarian consequences to this blockade. We are seeing shortages of food, families are being forcibly separated, and children pulled out of school. We believe these are unintended consequences, especially during this Holy Month of Ramadan, but they can be addressed immediately.”
We have no idea whether or not Trump was aware of Tillerson’s statement, or if he can even find the nation of Qatar on a map. However, he wasted no time letting the world community know Tillerson’s words were meaningless.
“The nation of Qatar, unfortunately has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” he said, before referencing his meeting with the Arab-Islamic American Summit on May 21, in Saudi Arabia. “And in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. So we had a decision to make. Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.”
Best part? Trump made these remarks at this afternoon’s Rose Garden press conference with his neutered Secretary of State sitting front row center.
Anybody want a job?