‘Heartbreaking’: Analyst aghast as Trump’s war drives Navy sailors to rock bottom
The mental health breakdown aboard the U.S.S. Lincoln as President Donald Trump's Iran war drags on is reaching the breaking point, Pentagon reporter Priya Sridhar told MS NOW's Katy Tur on Wednesday.
"Heartbreaking" reports have been flooding in about sailors jumping, or trying to jump, off the side of the vessel as their conditions and psyches deteriorate, she noted — and they "feel like there's no end in sight."
"This young woman who I spoke to said that her husband has been expressing to her that he's been struggling with this deployment for several months, basically since the middle of the deployment," said Sridhar.
An aircraft mechanic on the vessel, her husband "notified his chain of command multiple times and went to the medical team saying that he was having suicidal ideations, but they were basically dismissed." The Navy didn't confirm to her that he was the sailor who went overboard for nearly a week.
"She also shared with me the last text message that he sent to her prior to him jumping off the ship. And I want to read part of it to you," Sridhar continued. "He basically said, 'I think the boat is finally getting to me, and I really don't think I can keep up my peace act anymore. You are right that it all isn't okay. We were supposed to leave Fifth Fleet on July 15th, but then something had to come up, and my last hope of being home soon was gone.'"
His text continued, reiterating that it's "really getting me" and "I don't think I can do another deployment after this, and I don't even know if I can finish this deployment."
"[These are] really heartbreaking details, Katy," said Sridhar — as well as mounting scrutiny over why the Navy hasn't done anything about this.
"I did reach out to them for comment, and they basically said that they can't comment on individual service members' medical records for privacy reasons, but they are disputing the fact that there's any sort of uptick in suicidal ideation on this specific ship," she added.
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Trump nears the one mistake that ‘would be the end’ of his presidency: expert
A foreign policy expert warned on Monday that President Donald Trump is inching closer to making the one mistake that would end his presidency.
Over the last week, reports indicate that conditions for U.S. sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea for more than nine months, have become so bad that at least one sailor has jumped overboard. The reports have raised significant questions about troop morale at a time when Trump and his advisers seem to be contemplating launching a ground offensive in Iran as negotiations have stalled, David Rothkopf, global affairs columnist for The Daily Beast and an international trade official during the Clinton administration, said during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast."
Rothkopf warned that if Trump ordered that ground offensive, it would likely spell the end of his presidency.
“This war is illegal. It has been mishandled. It has been bungled. It is going terribly," Rothkopf declared. "And if Donald Trump were to get on TV tomorrow night and say, ‘I believe that we should put troops on the ground and we will lose thousands of Americans,’ the country would go wild."
“No Republicans would win in November," he added. "It would be the end, and he knows it. He knows he’s got no wiggle room here.”
