It was still dark on the early morning of May 2, 2011, when two dozen Navy SEALs boarded two Black Hawk helicopters and headed for the border of Pakistan. Working for legal reasons under the command of the CIA, and with the concentrated force of the entire Department of Defense, they scaled 7-foot walls, they breached the fortified compound, and they started a 7-minute firefight.
Forty minutes later, the Seals radioed “Geronimo-E KIA.” After a decade of searching, Osama Bin Laden was finally dead.
A little before midnight ET back in Washington, President Barack Obama approached the lectern in the East Room of the White House and announced that the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks had finally been brought to justice.
He thanked the military. He thanked the intelligence community. And he thanked his own White House. Out of many efforts, Obama explained, came one outcome: the death of an evil man. “Let’s remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power,” the president concluded, “but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Fast forward six years.
President Trump makes some phone calls to the Chinese government. He boosts a couple of idiot college kids, meathead UCLA basketball players stupid enough to shoplift, out of a Chinese jail. The father of one said idiot complains.
Trump attacks. Insults fly back-and-forth. The president expresses remorse for not leaving a young American to rot in an Chinese jail. The feud continues.
It was still dark on Nov. 22 when the president let out a primordial tweet. As the country prepared to reflect on blessings and providence on Thanksgiving, Trump demanded credit and attention. It wasn’t the State Department who saved those kids. It wasn’t the White House who brought them home. Switching on caps-lock, Trump screams: “IT WAS ME.”
To be sure, everyone spikes the football, and everyone eventually tries to take credit. But politics comes at you fast, and it seems to have been speeding up in these past few years. That’s a shame.
