Trump the Arms Dealer

Trump was one of the biggest cheerleaders for selling weapons to anyone, no matter how they were going to use them.

Trump recently criticized Nikki Haley for supporting wars to enrich weapons manufacturers, but he might as well have been talking about himself:

“People that want to go have wars all the time. Nikki’s one of them. She’s one of them,” he said. “'Let's kill people all over the place, and let's make a lot of money for those people that make the missiles [bold mine-DL].'"

When Trump was president, he had the opportunity to cut off all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Instead, he chose to make more deals with these governments, and he opposed all efforts to block the arms sales and he vetoed the war powers resolution demanding an end to U.S. support for the war on Yemen. To get around Congressional oversight, he declared a fake emergency to expedite weapons to the Saudis and the UAE. To justify these bad decisions, he bragged and lied about how many jobs the arms sales would create and took pride in funneling more weapons to governments guilty of countless war crimes. Years later, he faults Haley for the very thing that he repeatedly did while he was president.

It’s true that there are lots of people that want the U.S. to be fighting wars constantly, and many of them want this because it benefits weapons manufacturers. It’s important to remember that Trump is one of those people. He was one of the biggest cheerleaders for selling weapons to anyone, no matter how they were going to use them.