Morning Joe bashes Trump as being all-consumed by ‘decade-long’ obsession

President Donald Trump has reverted back to an old obsession as he attempts to rally U.S. allies around his war in Iran, according to MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough.

The president berated NATO allies Tuesday during a press gaggle at the White House, griping that none of them were willing to help the U.S. keep the Strait of Hormuz open to commercial shipping, and the “Morning Joe” host highlighted Trump’s claim that “we don’t need them.”

“Even in the middle of a war, one of the most significant wars in our our lifetimes, Donald Trump’s obsession with running down the alliance that helped defeat the Soviet Union continues,” Scarborough said, “and he’s he’s been stuck on this for well over a decade now, forgetting that it was NATO allies who sacrificed time and time again for the United States in Iraq the first time, the second time in Afghanistan. They’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with us for years, so to be attacking them, to be attacking Ukraine at the same time, making life easier for Vladimir Putin with sanctions relief, has a lot of allies and a lot of lawmakers on the Republican and Democratic side shaking their head.”

Scarborough said the conflict already showed some similarities to the lengthy war in Vietnam that bled U.S. forces until they withdrew in defeat, and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius was inclined to agree.

“I think that dilemma is weighing on on President Trump when a war is going badly, when you’re unable to find a way to terminate it successfully, that’s the most painful thing possible for a president,” Ignatius said. “I watched that in my lifetime with President [Lyndon B.] Johnson and then with President George W. Bush, and it’s a tough moment.”

Israel has been successfully hunting down and killing Irani leadership at every level, but Ignatius said that Trump still has not determined how to end a war that he launched nearly three weeks ago.

“The thing that Trump still hasn’t found is a pathway to ending this war ahead of us, is what the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page this morning called the battle of Hormuz,” he said. “In other words, the battle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and put global commerce back to normal. Trump has to do it, and he has two choices. He can either do it by coercion or by military force.”