Earth to Brian Williams, it’s clear you had to learn on the job to not make stuff up! On Thursday’s The 11th Hour, MSNBC host Brian Williams and former Kerry State Department official/Time editor Rick Stengel blasted President Trump as “a novice” channeling world dictators while learning on the job.
“Rick Stengel, an honest straight up question. He is a novice at politics. He is a novice at all things military. He does not have a basis in history. What's wrong with any or all of that,” Williams wondered.
Predicably, Stengel joined in the insults, but tried to preface them by stating that “there’s nothing wrong with” learning on the job because “everyone” needs to a degree. That being said, Stengel knocked Trump for “coming from much further back than everybody else.”
Stengel continued the snideness by comparing Trump to an “autocrat” when it comes to not admitting he doesn’t know something. Of course, Obama had a lot he didn’t know coming into office, but did anyone raise these same points (without being called a racist)?
Anyway, he went about his merry way:
He had to discover that there are three branches of government, for example. There’s all kinds of thing he had to learn. He is not steeped in history and the thing that is a little bit annoying and the sort of autocrat’s trick is that he never says he doesn't know something, that's why he fixes NATO overnight like that in one hour and he changes relations with Chinese and it’s — suddenly there is a new reality that he deems reality, which is a Putin trick.
“So, I completely approve of him learning on the job and changing his mind to something that we agree with and think is more mature and more establishment oriented. It's just the manner that sometimes is a little bit disturbing,” Stengel concluded.
Back during the show’s opening block, former Leon Panetta aide Jeremy Bash fretted that the President should be more mindful of crediting Obama for having “built.”
“For eight straight years, President Obama put forward budgets and built capability and for him to campaign and say the military is depleted but then in 2017 wake up and say they are great, it's amazing they are my military, there is cognitive whiplash there,” Bash argued.
Also, Medal of Honor recipient and MSNBC military analyst Col. Jack Jacobs (Ret.) observed that Trump’s “perfectly happy to say” that the U.S. military is now “his military” just as Lyndon Johnson once did when speaking to a Marine about all the military helicopters belonging to him.
Williams found that uneasy, wondering: “Does it bother you to hear a President call it my military?”
Jacobs immediately brushed that concern aside (one that I doubt Williams had when Barack Obama was President):
No. Not at all. Because at the end of the day — look, if he thinks it's his, it's perfectly okay for it to be his. At the end of the day, the buck does stop with him. He can make things happen or not make them happen and I think it’s — it’s — I'm happy for him to do that, too, because he is getting closer and closer to the adult supervision in the West Wing in the White House to General McMaster, to General Mattis, the closer he gets to them, I think the happier I will be that he calls it my military.
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams on April 13:
MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
April 13, 2017
11:10 p.m. EasternJACK JACOBS: He is perfectly happy to say his military and I’m reminded of Lyndon Johnson’s observation when he was — when the Marine said, “here sir, here’s your helicopter.” He said, “son, they’re all my helicopters” and I think he feels the same way as long as it does what it needs to do.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Does it bother you to hear a President call it my military?
JACOBS: No. Not at all. Because at the end of the day — look, if he thinks it's his, it's perfectly okay for it to be his. At the end of the day, the buck does stop with him. He can make things happen or not make them happen and I think it’s — it’s — I'm happy for him to do that, too, because he is getting closer and closer to the adult supervision in the West Wing in the White House to General McMaster, to General Mattis, the closer he gets to them, I think the happier I will be that he calls it my military.
(....)
11:14 p.m. Eastern
JEREMY BASH: I want to say one thing, Brian, about the notion earlier about my military. I think that's okay as well when you’re the commander in chief. But he's got to remember, this military is the military that President Obama built. For eight straight years, President Obama put forward budgets and built capability and for him to campaign and say the military is depleted but then in 2017 wake up and say they are great, it's amazing they are my military, there is cognitive whiplash there.
(....)
11:23 p.m. Eastern
WILLIAMS: Rick Stengel, an honest straight up question. He is a novice at politics. He is a novice at all things military. He does not have a basis in history. What's wrong with any or all of that?
RICHARD STENGEL: There’s nothing wrong with that, Brian. I mean he — he — everyone says the job is suis generis, everyone has to learn it on the job. He happens to be coming from much further back than everybody else. He had to discover that there are three branches of government, for example. There’s all kinds of thing he had to learn. He is not steeped in history and the thing that is a little bit annoying and the sort of autocrat’s trick is that he never says he doesn't know something, that's why he fixes NATO overnight like that in one hour and he changes relations with Chinese and it’s — suddenly there is a new reality that he deems reality, which is a Putin trick. So, I completely approve of him learning on the job and changing his mind to something that we agree with and think is more mature and more establishment oriented. It's just the manner that sometimes is a little bit disturbing.
