Lardass recounts his big adventure

In an interview with journalists traveling with him in Iraq, the president signaled his frustration with the secrecy surrounding the excursion, adding that previous planned trips had been scuttled because word began leaking out.

Asked if he had concerns about making the trip, Trump said, “Sure. When I heard what you had to go through?”

He added, “I had concerns about the institution of the presidency. Not for myself personally. I had concerns for the First Lady, I will tell you."

  Politico

LOL. He's so brave. He has concerns for the institution of the presidency.  Double LOL.  The institution of the presidency would barely suffer a hiccup if something happened to him.  It's set up to carry on.  And, in fact, the institution of the presidency is constantly being degraded by him being in office.  Plus, everybody knows his one and only concern in life is himself.

And why did Melania even go?  Was he so concerned about the possibility of being killed that he wanted to make sure she wouldn't be left alive in the eventuality?

Trump then described the security precautions Air Force One takes when landing in a war zone.

"If you would have see what we had to go through in the darkened plane with all windows closed with no light anywhere — pitch black," he said.

The horror!

At one point, rumors circulated that Trump had ditched reporters and departed for a war zone while he was alleged to be golfing at his Mar-a-Lago club over the Thanksgiving holiday. And there were whispers that the president was tacking on a covert trip to Iraq or Afghanistan on his return trip from the G-20 in Argentina. Both sets of rumors turned out to be false.

[...]

The surprise trip occurred on the fifth day of a government shutdown, with several federal agencies shuttered and neither the president nor congressional Democrats have given any indication they are any closer to reaching a deal to reopening the government than when it began.

So sad. He was looking for some brownie points and ended up getting slammed for revealing identities of SEALs in a combat area and pissing off the Iraqis.

Trump made a surprise trip to al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq Wednesday, his first visit to troops in a war zone since becoming president. He met with US service members during the three-hour visit, but no Iraqi officials.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was unable to meet with Abdul-Mahdi because of security concerns and the short notice of the president’s trip to Iraq.

She said Abdul-Mahdi had accepted Trump’s invitation for him to visit the White House next year.

[...]

The statement said the Iraqi leader had invited the president to visit Baghdad, and Trump invited Abdel-Mahdi to Washington. But it did not say whether Abdel-Mahdi accepted the invitation.

[...]

Abdul-Mahdi’s office did not say whether he had accepted Trump’s invitation to visit Washington, and attributed the missed connection to “differences in points of view over the arrangements.”

  Times of Israel

Speaking of his bravery, I'm guessing the difference was that Trump was afraid to leave the confines of the very secure American military facilities.

A bit more flesh is added on this Israeli news article to what His Lardship said about keeping a US military presence in Iraq:

“We can use this as a base if we wanted to do something in Syria,” he said. “If we see something happening with ISIS that we don’t like, we can hit them so fast and so hard” that they “really won’t know what the hell happened.”

Tough talk for someone who told Turkey's leader that we were leaving the defense of Syria to the Turks, and also told us - and the troops he talked to in Iraq - that we have totally defeated ISIS.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Melania and me.