Jimmy Kimmel mashup contrasts Obama, Trump styles
There is a very funny video circulating throughout the world on social media, in which (former) U.S. President Barack Obama’s composure is contrasted with Donald Trump’s bombast. The clip originally aired on the late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live and it is introduced as a mash-up – alternating sound bites of Obama announcing to the world that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces, and Trump making a similar pronouncement regarding the death of Daesh (aka ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
While the Kimmel crew edited the mash-up to produce maximum hilarity, the fact is that the difference in these two presidents’ demeanour is startling. Obama appears solemn and his direct delivery of the unembellished news of bin Laden’s execution at the hands of a U.S. Seal team carries a sense of gravitas.
Trump, on the other hand, comes across as a gloating buffoon.
Often using the collective ‘we,’ Trump made it sound like he was actually involved in the raid. In attempting to give praise to the initiative shown by the U.S. special forces operatives, Trump comes across as both comical and childish. “Even not going through the front door,” Trump described the details of the raid, adding, “If you’re a normal person you say ‘knock knock’ may I come in?”
This is not exactly the sort of juvenile joke one would expect from the commander in chief of the world’s largest and most sophisticated military force. Trump also revealed the fact that the U.S. commandos had used dogs to chase al-Baghdadi into a dead end tunnel, following which Trump gleefully reported “al-Baghdadi died like a dog.”
However, contrary to Trump’s attempts to portray al-Baghdadi’s final moments being the cowardly act of ‘whimpering in the dirt,’ the Daesh leader apparently detonated a suicide vest that killed himself and two of his children. Why Trump felt it necessary to relay this detail to the American public only further illustrates that the U.S. president has no understanding of the Islamic jihadist mindset.
In life, al-Baghdadi encouraged his followers to seek martyrdom in order to defend his self-proclaimed caliphate. Detonating a suicide vest while engaged in a firefight with U.S. forces will be considered a death in battle by al-Baghdadi’s followers. He has now become a martyr in their eyes. He in the end practiced what he preached.
Although Trump also announced that the same raid had killed not only al-Baghdadi but also his second in command, it would seem that Daesh did not remain leaderless for long. By Nov. 1, less than six days after al-Baghdadi’s death, Daesh announced their new leader to be a chap named Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al-Qurashi.
During his 48-minute press briefing on al-Baghdadi’s death, Trump repeatedly stressed just what a bad guy the Daesh leader had been. The main theme of Trump’s victory rant was that al-Baghdadi was a bigger terrorist than bin Laden. To make his point that al-Baghdadi was “the worst ever” evildoer on the planet, Trump stated “Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. (al-Baghdadi) is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, “a country” a caliphate, and he was trying to do it again.”
Somehow in Trump’s mind, his administration’s execution of al-Baghdadi trumps (pun intended) the Obama administration’s capture and killing of bin Laden. The truth is that neither of these highly publicized U.S. assassinations have done anything to eliminate the threat of Islamic jihadists.
Neither bin Laden nor al-Baghdadi were leaders in the conventional sense that they actually commanded their fighters on a tactical level. Both men at the time of their executions were living as hunted fugitives.
They had long since lost direct operational contact with their followers. They were instead symbolic figureheads – both of whom have now been martyred by the U.S. military. That does not make the world a safe place, no matter what the Donald would have you believe.