Hillary’s Internet Die-Hards Struggle with the Idea That Trump Just Executed Her Syria Plan

Speaking to a doting Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times at the 2017 Women in the World Summit in New York on Thursday, defeated Hillary Clinton offered up her explanations for why she lost the seemingly-unlosable 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump: sexism, Comey, Putin, Russia, trolls, etc. It was not until the conversation turned to Syria, however, that Clinton (unintentionally) gave viewers real insight.

Hours before U.S. missile launch against Syria, Hillary Clinton called for strikes against the country’s airfields. https://t.co/ViS9ngkKCwpic.twitter.com/41vndiF6JV

— ABC News (@ABC) April 7, 2017

“I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them,” she told Kristof, bemoaning the Obama administration’s approach to dealing with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Like many of her statements during the primary, this remark would prove polarizing when, just hours later, the Trump administration launched 50 cruise missiles at Shayrat Airfield in western Syria in response to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons on his own people earlier this week.

The incident instantly generated a Twitter feud between progressives and her most die-hard supporters, which resulted in “World War 3” trending until the early hours Friday morning.

In the face of the sheer devastation in Syria (and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa), voters in the first group felt that Clinton was too hasty to resort to the truncheon in delicate, complex diplomatic matters. Now that her hawkish recommendation was carried into action by a Republican administration—the Trump administration, no less—progressives felt vindicated because the incident highlighted and reinforced this central grievance:

Hillary Clinton thinks Trump should escalate the war in Syria, fully vindicating her toughest left critics. https://t.co/3J8GmnExfQ

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) April 6, 2017

The most diehard members of the Hillary Clinton camp will lead the new campaign Patriotic Democrats for Trump-Led Regime Change in Syria pic.twitter.com/sIQtNQsaGY

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 6, 2017

Meanwhile, Clinton’s most ardent defenders found themselves in an awkward position, defending their candidate’s idea while opposing Trump’s apparent implementation of it. This led to some absurd results and impressive mental gymnastics as the “Blame Bernie/Rusia/Putin/Comey” crowd sought to reconcile the two contradictory positions:

Trump is willing to bomb the sh*t out of Syria, but then doesn’t want to take their refugees. That’s the difference between him and Hillary.

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) April 7, 2017

So according to Trumpsters, Hillary wanted war with Russia- yet it’s Trump who just shot 50 Tomahawk missiles at their ally. #Syria#WWIII

— Alt Fed Employee (@Alt_FedEmployee) April 7, 2017

Thank God we didn’t elect a woman who’d start war illegally for stupid reasons like her ego or low approval ratings or suspicion of treason

— Sady Doyle (@sadydoyle) April 7, 2017

Berniebros: “Vote Trump! Hillary means war with Syria!”
Trump goes to war with Syria
Berniebros: “Liberals made him do it!”

— alt-center (@neoblackout) April 6, 2017

Also: Imagine if Hillary Clinton threatened to change her Syria policy because she got emotional over seeing dead babies… https://t.co/gbzgMnswva

— Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) April 6, 2017

@JoyAnnReid I’d be so much less worried if it were Hillary doing this.

— Diana Spindler (@diana_spindler) April 7, 2017

Watching Hillary discuss policy in Syria and not being afraid of Russia is making me SO UPSET B/C SHE COULD HAVE BEEN OUR PRESIDENT. #WITW

— Ella Dawson (@brosandprose) April 6, 2017

@ the ppl who said Hillary would start WW3 W/ Russia, Syria n voted trump to avoid that but now support him doing that

You a fake ass bitch

— Aaron Gonzalez (@CptKerrFluffle) April 7, 2017

If this situation proves anything—besides the absurd hypocrisy of neoliberal Democratic partisans—it’s that Hillary Clinton did not stay in the woods long enough. Democrats are at their weakest point in generations in terms of representation at the state and national level, and in order to fix that they’re going to need to move beyond 2016 and Clintonism.