Steve Schmidt, a veteran GOP strategist who quit the party in 2018 to protest its capitulation to President Donald Trump, on Tuesday said he cannot imagine anyone worse to lead America as tensions escalate with Iran.
“The president has lied many, many thousands of times to the American people so structurally you can’t imagine, I think, a worse possible president, a worst possible leader to stand at the head of America’s armed forces at this very dangerous moment,” the political analyst told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“The genie is certainly out of the bottle now,” Schmidt said during a discussion about Iran’s ballistic missile strikes in retaliation for last week’s U.S. assassination of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
“We’re at the early stages of a hot war,” he continued. “It is a monumental moment that the Iranian military has launched a ballistic missile attack against U.S. military personnel on Iraqi bases in Iraq.”
“It is almost certain that there will be a response from the United States,” Schmidt predicted. “Donald Trump simply, politically, is not in a position to not be able to escalate from here. We’re at a very dangerous moment now.”
“We stand at the most dangerous moment in the Middle East that we have lived through in our lifetimes and there’s been plenty of dangerous moments,” he added.