I don’t usually comment on the ubiquitous Trump bashing in the unified German press and elswhere, but this outrageous yet typical example is worth preserving.
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It must be especially galling to the left-wing media that an outlandish person like Donald Trump could forge peace deals in the Middle East while its patron saints in the Obama administration could not.
Consider the deliberate twisting of facts in The New York Times on September 24, 2020 about U.S. arm sales to Saudi Arabia. In a “News Analysis” section called “A Fraying Rationale for U.S. Aid to the Saudis in Yemen,” the Times wrote that
Mr. Trump decided in early 2017 to restart arms sales to the Gulf Arab nations that President Barack Obama had halted in late 2016.
Obama’s term ended in “late 2016.” From 2009 to 2015, the Obama administration sold more weapons to foreign countries than any administration in U.S. history – particularly to Saudi Arabia. Obama’s penchant for arms sales was so egregious that even liberal media firms like Vice were appalled, writing an article as Obama left office in January 2017, “Obama’s Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II.” The sub-header to the article was “Many were sold to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.” The article noted that “Under Obama the overall sales, pending delivery of equipment and specialised training for troops, to Saudi Arabia alone has ballooned to $115 billion.” At the time of the article, the war Saudis were participating in in Yemen was well under way with “over 10,000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis.”
While the Times was factually accurate that in Obama’s final month of his presidency he halted the sale of precision-guided munitions, it was only of that particular weaponry and only after eight years of selling the Saudis over $100 billion in arms!
New York Times article written to paint Obama and Biden as pacifists and Trump as a mercenary on September 24, 2020, coupling a picture of destruction in Yemen with one of Trump with the Saudis sitting comfortably in the White House striking deals. (Click to enlarge)
The Times article stated that “current and former administration officials, as well as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, say American involvement [in selling Saudi’s weapons] must end.” That’s quite a bit of “malarkey” as Biden would say, having been second in command in an administration that sold $115 billion in arms to the Saudis.
The Times added that “the State Department, starting in the Obama administration, sent a senior level official, Larry Lewis, on frequent trips to Saudi Arabia to advise on civilian harm,” making the Democrats appear worried about the death to civilians, but “the next year Trump administration officials pushed him [Lewis] out of the agency,” making Team Trump appear callous.
The attack on Trump continued to cast him as a simple arms merchant and uncaring of the damage done by the weapons: “Mr. Trump has offered a more transactional rationale [for selling arms to the Saudis]: that the United States should continue to sell weapons for the money. “They have nothing but money. Nothing but cash, and they pay us now.“”
The foreign policy failures of the Obama administration in the Middle East were plentiful, ranging from giving Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons; selling more weapons to Arab countries that any administration in history as a counter-balance the blessing of a nuclear-emboldened Iran; watching the arms sales be used to pound Yemen, the poorest country in the world, into sand; watching the plane-loads of cash sent to Iran get funneled into terrorist groups; failing miserably in negotiating between Israel and the Palestinians leading to Gaza wars in 2012 and 2014 and the stabbing intifada of 2015, to name but a few.
While U.S. voters don’t rank foreign affairs high on their priority list, The Times doesn’t want to take a chance.
During this particularly contentious election, The Times is actively recasting Obama and Biden as pacifists and Trump as a cold mercenary when in fact it was the Obama administration which enabled death and destruction in the Middle East and Trump who forged peace agreements in the region.
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