Next in Donald Trump’s crosshairs? Nigeria

President Donald Trump has been lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize since at least when his administration managed the release of three Americans from North Korea modestly proclaiming everyone thinks I should win the Nobel Peace Prize but I would never say it Of lesson he did say it over and over again repeating his litany of all the wars he s allegedly ended He was sorely disappointed when the committee awarded the prize to Venezuelan democracy activist Maria Corina Machado instead But there s constantly next year None of this talk of peace is to say that Trump hasn t been issuing violent threats to a variety of targets He s perpetually loved to warn people that he s prepared to unleash fire and fury if they don t without delay bend to his will Before their famous bromance he even explicitly threatened nuclear war with North Korea tweeting to Kim Jong Un I too have a Nuclear Button but it is a much bigger more powerful one than his and my Button works Since he returned to office in January Trump has been talking about authentically invading or annexing countries whether it s Greenland Canada or more not long ago to go in and kill Hamas in Gaza He bombed Iran s nuclear facilities with unknown results and in the last couple of months he s initiated a murder spree on the high seas in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific ostensibly to defend against narco-terrorists who are attacking the United States by allegedly selling drugs to eager American consumers He has been publicly denying that he plans to order an attack on the Venezuelan mainland but it s very hard to imagine why the Pentagon would need to amass a large flotilla including an aircraft carrier off the country s coast for any other reason Related Trump has free rein to kill courtesy of the Justice Department There s been a lot of speculation that Trump is following chosen version of the Monroe Doctrine and asserting his dominance over his hemisphere But Iran and Gaza don t fit that concept and over the weekend he made yet another threat this time against Africa s the majority populous and oil-rich country Seemingly out of nowhere he published a bizarre post on Truth Social If the Nigerian Authorities continues to allow the killing of Christians the U S A will right now stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may very well go into that now disgraced country guns-a-blazing to altogether wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for attainable action If we attack it will be fast vicious and sweet just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians WARNING THE NIGERIAN ESTABLISHMENT BETTER MOVE FAST If we attack it will be fast vicious and sweet That Nobel Peace Prize is definitely in the bag now especially after he followed up with another post on Saturday that warned If we attack it will be fast vicious and sweet He also added Nigeria to the governing body s religious freedom watch list Secretary of Defense who now bills himself as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth right now responded to Trump s order Yes sir The Department of War is preparing for action Either the Nigerian Authorities protects Christians or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities As Trump returned to Washington D C from Florida on Sunday he was inquired if there was a possibility that he would order American boots on the ground and he replied Could be According to CNN this was yet another situation of the president seeing a segment on Fox News He was heading down to Florida for his Let Them Eat Cake Halloween party and got very angry But this has been a subject of interest among the far right Christian contingent for a while now Sen Ted Cruz R-Tx has called for America to stop what he erroneously characterizes as Christian mass murder Influencer-gadfly and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer has been posting about the issue as in recent weeks as Friday before Trump made his announcement A highly respected member of Trump s informal coterie of outside advisers it s entirely attainable that Fox News got their heads up from her since she is now credentialed to cover the Pentagon Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Whatever the incident this appears to be based upon misinformation Nigeria is dealing with the Boko Haram extremist group which does target Christians But it also threatens Muslims who don t accept its radical form of Islam as well as those who are sympathetic to the Nigerian administration Majority experts and analysts reject the assertion that this is certain kind of Christian genocide Trump may have desired to give a little something to his cherished Christians as he sometimes refers to his evangelical supporters but Hegseth is a much more engaging situation This is after all a man who wrote a book called American Crusade which the Guardian described as depicting Islam as a natural historic enemy of the west presents distorted versions of Muslim doctrine in great replacement -style racist conspiracy theories treats leftists and Muslims as bound together in their efforts to subvert the U S and idolises medieval crusaders In fact Hegseth literally wears his love for the crusaders on his body and believes that he has been persecuted for it As scholars Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque wrote in the Bulwark the defense secretary complained that the Jerusalem Cross on his chest got him booted from guard duty during President Joe Biden s inauguration in January because it made him a possible threat He says he was discriminated against because of his religion But that symbol is a highly politicized part of the far-right s obsession with the Templar myths and Hegseth knows that We need your help to stay independent Subscribe the present day to patronage Heather Digby Parton s commentary He sports a sword embedded in a cross on his forearm which symbolizes the verse in which Christ says I came not to send peace but a sword Hegseth also prominently displays the words Deus Vult on his chest the battle cry of the first crusade In his book he makes his belief clear that those words mean for followers of Christ to take up the sword in defense of their faith their families and their freedom Hegseth is also a member of an extreme far-right sect called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches that also believes in militant Christianity It s heavily influenced by Reconstructionism a theology that religion scholar Julie Ingersoll describes as believing it s the job of Christians to exercise dominion over the whole world In short Hegseth is a serious Christian nationalist and there could be nothing more satisfying for him than to muster a fighting force to wage war against Muslims in a foreign land in the name of Jesus Christ It sounds medieval and it is but Hegseth is the secretary of war and if Loomer were to persuade the addled president to give the go-ahead it s likely he would not hesitate to execute the strategy Whether they will follow through on this is anyone s guess At several point one might hope that a scarce of the Christians who are clamoring for the U S to go into Nigeria with guns-a-blazing might spare a thought for their fellow followers of Christ who are being terrorized every single day right here in America at the hands of an oppressive regime that is deporting them to face certain persecution Read more about this topic Trump s America is governed by necropolitics How Donald Trump broke the American mind Make America radioactive again Yes if Trump has his way The post Next in Donald Trump s crosshairs Nigeria appeared first on Salon com