President Donald Trump appeared to justify the U.S. military’s renewed strikes on Iran by invoking a scene from the television drama “The West Wing.”
The Republican president shared the clip on Truth Social on Tuesday, the same day U.S. forces carried out a fresh round of strikes targeting Iranian air defense systems, ground control facilities and radar sites. U.S. Central Command described the operation as “a proportional response” after a U.S. Apache helicopter was downed in the Strait of Hormuz.
The 90-second clip, taken from Season 1 of “The West Wing,” shows a fictional president, portrayed by Martin Sheen, meeting with military advisers to discuss how to respond after Syrian forces shot down an American aircraft.
In the scene, Sheen’s character challenges the logic of proportional retaliation, arguing that adversaries anticipate such measured responses.
“What is the virtue of a proportionate response?” Sheen asks after his advisors offer up a list of enemy targets. “If it’s what we do and it’s what we’ve always done, don’t they know we’re gonna do it?”
Instead he offers an alternative: a disproportionate response.
“You kill an American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportionate response,” he says, striking the table. “We come back with total disaster.”
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