Trump drops F-bomb after Israel and Iran violate ceasefire—is there bitterness about Obama’s Iran deal?

Critics call out President Trump’s fixation with wanting to outdo his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who brokered a nuclear deal with Iran and received a Nobel Peace Prize for fostering international peace.

A frustrated President Donald Trump dropped the F-bomb on Tuesday morning while expressing his anger over Israel and Iran violating a ceasefire that he and Trump officials had brokered several hours before.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f–k they’re doing!” said Trump as he angrily walked away from the White House press after missiles continued to drop in the Middle East despite an agreed deadline to cease military operations.

Trump, who is headed to meet with world leaders for the NATO Summit in the Netherlands, said Israel and Iran’s leadership needed to “calm down” and called current tensions “ridiculous.”

Critics of Trump say his clear anger toward Israel and Iran speaks to a larger issue of his leadership and, perhaps, a fixation with receiving a Nobel Peace Prize–something his longtime political nemesis, former President Barack Obama, achieved for his role in brokering international peace in 2009.

“That is a primary driver,” Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross told theGrio. “Former President Barack Obama lives rent-free in Donald Trump’s head. He’s somebody he never thought should have been president, surely because of the color of his skin and his name, and he’s somebody he has always tried to best.”

“Donald Trump is in a one-sided competition with America’s favorite president, which is Barack Obama,” said political analyst Reecie Colbert. “Trump wants to beat Obama, but the only thing that he’s beating Obama at is getting impeached twice, getting convicted 34 times, and showing time and time again that he is an unfit, unserious person.”

Colbert told theGrio that even Trump’s Saturday announcement of the U.S. military strikes in Iran was connected to his perceived attempt to outdo Obama. Trump notably delivered his address at the very same spot outside the White House East Room, where Obama famously announced the U.S. military operation that killed Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.

“[It] was clearly him trying to get his Osama bin Laden moment that President Barack Obama iconically got after that strike happened,” said Colbert, who is the host of Sirius XM’s “The Reecie Colbert Show.”

Rather than celebrating a major peace agreement, Trump is facing increasing doubts that his stewardship can contain the powder keg that is the conflict in the Middle East, which has existed for decades.

“I think he believed that if he just yells ceasefire, he wielded enough power for it to happen, not acknowledging that Iran doesn’t have to listen. Not acknowledging that Israel has never adhered to a ceasefire itself,” said Cross.

Democrats and even some Republicans slammed the Trump administration for its strikes in Iran last week without seeking the counsel and approval of Congress, which some have called unconstitutional.

Democrats like U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, said Trump is to blame for the existing conflict between Israel and Iran. In 2018, Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear non-proliferation agreement struck between Obama and leaders in the region that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for loosened sanctions on Iran and those doing business with the country.

The Democrat said Trump’s decision to pull out “set this whole situation that we’re in right now into motion.”

“A lot of the peace that was in place was because of the work of Obama and his administration,” said Cross, who said Trump’s “fervor to erase all things Obama” blinded him from “the peril that comes along with that.”

“He just wants to leave no vestige, no name brand, no policy, no treaty, no negotiation of President Obama in place,” she noted. “The damage is going to be felt for decades to come, and I don’t think he considered it.”

Even Trump’s claim to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program turned out to be not so true, as reports now indicate Iran may have moved its nuclear enrichment materials ahead of the strikes. Cross said Trump’s handling of the conflict, including calling for regime change in Iran, is not helpful to the larger goal of brokering peace.

“It’s haphazard,” she said, adding that Trump has a “lack of understanding of the culture in the region and the ongoing tensions.”

Colbert predicted “this is just the beginning, not the end” as it relates to the whiplash of events in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.

“Donald Trump thought that he was going to be able to put a period exclamation point on this decades-long conflict,” she said. “The hubris and audacity it takes to think that he alone can fix it is going to go down in history is extraordinarily stupid.”