WaPo’s Eugene Robinson: Trump Has No Idea What He’s Doing, Could Blunder Into War With Iran

Morning Joe‘s panel was concerned about warlike noises coming from the White House Tuesday morning. Discussing a New York Times report that the administration has drawn up plans for a potential attack on Iran, Mika Brzezinski and regulars Willie Geist and Eugene Robinson warned that President Donald Trump is out of his depth.

“You see [National Security Advisor] John Bolton’s fingerprints all over this. This is what we were worried about when he was chosen for the job,” Brzezinski said.

“Well, and we shouldn’t be surprised that someone who has a reputation as one of the most hawkish advisors in Washington is pushing Donald Trump along this path,” guest Elise Jordan said.

“And I think that we should be incredibly concerned any time that we’re discussing moving over 100,000 troops into position because of escalating tensions. And I think I really cannot believe that we failed to learn anything from the first decade of this century and we are actually considering escalating with Iran in a war that would further destabilize the region and unleash God knows what in terms of chaos in a very troubled region already.”

“Gene, that was the first thing I thought when I saw this headline was dear God, here we go again,” Geist said.

“This does have John Bolton’s name written all over it. He’s been an Iran hawk from the beginning. It’s one of the reasons I think President Trump liked him as he watched him on Fox News and then installed him as his National Security Advisor. But we’re talking about a number of troops here and again the piece says that nothing is imminent. At this point they don’t have this plan, they’re just developing a contingency if something should happen in the Gulf. But we’re talking about a number of troops that approaches the number that went into Iraq at about 120,000.”

“When you talk about 120,000 troops, everybody should be deeply concerned that this is even being talked about,” Robinson said.

“This policy is clearly being driven by John Bolton. He has, you know, to call him a hawk on Iran is to understate dramatically what John Bolton is. He wants regime change in Iran. He doesn’t want a change in the regime’s behavior. He apparently doesn’t think that’s possible. We already got that, by the way, with the Iran nuclear deal, which the President thinks that John Bolton abrogated and tossed out and refuses to follow.”

“But Bolton wants the regime gone. That’s a very, very dangerous position to take. Iran is a big powerful nation. It’s not the United States, obviously, but when you talk about sending 120,000 troops to the region, that creates a trip wire. That makes it much more likely that we blunder into – or bluster our way into some sort of conflict that gets totally out of hand. President Trump has no idea what he’s doing here. None.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.