Elizabeth Warren Says What We're All Thinking

On Meet the Press on Sunday, Elizabeth Warren pointed out that the timing on Donald Trump’s ordered assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani seems just a tad fishy.

“We are not safer because Donald Trump had Soleimani killed,” Warren told host Chuck Todd. “We are much closer to the edge of war. The question is, why now?”

Indeed, why now? What could possibly be happening that might inspire Trump to drastically alter the course of political discussion?

Ah, right.

“I think the question people reasonably ask is next week, Donald Trump faces the start, potentially, of an impeachment trial,” Warren said. “Why now? I think people are starting to ask, ‘Why now, did he do this?’”

I’m no foreign policy expert—unlike, it seems, everyone on my Twitter timeline suddenly—but the timing on the Soleimani attack seems pretty obvious, right? Even Todd admitted that this week’s Meet the Press show would have focused on impeachment, had Trump not stoked the fires for a potential World War III. I’m not sure people are asking, “Why now?” as Warren posits, so much as they are saying, “Yes, I know exactly why now.”

In fact, the Republican presidential playbook seems to involve starting wars in the first term to ensure re-election in the second term. It hasn’t worked for every president, but it certainly worked for Ellen Degeneres’s best friend, and it might work for this one, too.