Donald Trump leveled fresh accusations at besieged Qatar during Friday’s brief press conference.
President Trump took a hard line on Qatar, moments after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to ease a blockade on Qatar, creating a seeming messing conflict within the Trump administration. Mr. Trump criticized Qatar for being a "funder of terrorism at a very high level."
The president said Qatar must end its support for extremism, along with "all other nations."
"I won't name other countries," Mr. Trump said.
Since the beginning of the week, a coalition of Arab states has blockaded Qatar, encouraged by a series of tweets from Donald Trump.
So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!
After Trump waved the starting flag, there was an immediate effect on the ground.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, and Maldives severed their ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting terrorism and opening up the worst rift in years among some of the most powerful states in the Arab world.
And, true to form, just as Trump’s cabinet moved to put out the fire, Trump splashed on a gallon of fresh gasoline.
Trump turning up the heat came immediately following a public effort by Rex Tillerson to calm down the disaster Trump already helped create.
The US secretary of state has urged Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states to ease their blockade on Qatar, saying it is causing unintended humanitarian consequences and affecting the US-led fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
This follows on news that the whole attack against Qatar may have been egged on by Russian hackers.
An investigation by the FBI has concluded that Russian hackers were responsible for sending out fake messages from the Qatari government, sparking the Gulf’s biggest diplomatic crisis in decades.
But once again, Donald Trump is willing to ignore the intelligence community when they tell him it’s the Russians, and ignore his own cabinet when they tell him to slow down. Since Trump is incapable of acknowledging a mistake on any scale, he’s charging ahead, with a cost that’s likely to be measured in lives.
Qatar said it was facing a campaign aimed at weakening it, denying it was interfering in the affairs of other countries.
"The campaign of incitement is based on lies that had reached the level of complete fabrications," the Qatari foreign ministry said in a statement.
A war in the Middle East that’s based on lies and encouraged by Republican intransigence. Why does that seem so familiar?