While Donald Trump golfs, his administration is dangerously ratcheting up tensions against Iran and Fox News trotted out one of its favorite Islamophobic war mongers, who also happens to be a former adviser to the Trump campaign, to argue that “limited” and “rational” military action in response to protesters attacking the U.S embassy in Iraq would be no big deal.

Fox anchor Sandra Smith introduced Phares as a “Fox News foreign security and national affairs analyst” without mentioning he was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign. What’s worse is that while Fox presents Phares as some kind of neutral analyst, he’s a far-right Islamophobe who claimed, during the Obama administration, that the Muslim Brotherhood or “front or ally or sympathizers are performing inside government” and “are producing actual memorandums that become policy.”

Not surprisingly, Phares was full of praise for Trump’s provocations – well, make that Trump's administration’s provocations. U.S. airstrikes on an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq have now resulted in Iraqi protesters storming the American embassy in Baghdad. Trump has been spending his days golfing, though he interrupted his game to go back to his resort, which he dubbed “The Southern White House” in an effort to pretend he’s not a slacker.

Now, Trump has issued a tweet saying Iran will be “held fully responsible” (before resuming his rage tweeting about impeachment).

Phares couldn’t have been more pleased about the saber rattling. He referenced another Trump tweet: “To those many millions of people in Iraq who want freedom and who don’t want to be dominated and controlled by Iran, this is your time!”

PHARES: There are a lot of voices in Washington and elsewhere about what can we do, we are in a big trouble. Not at all. We actually should divide our strategy, if I may say, one, to respond to military actions by military actions, as when the militias attacked our post, we responded in a very limited and very rational way.

But at the same time, you just mentioned it – the tweet of the president. This is exactly what the administration should be doing, starting with the president, secretary of state and, I hope, the Congressional leaders will support – that is to talk to the Iraqi people, talk to the Iraqi demonstrators and telling them this is your time.

What will happen? That would flip most of Iraq. First, the Shia. The Sunni are already against Iran and the Kurds are against Iran. It is a good momentum if you know how to engineer it.

Remember when the Bush administration painted W’s regime-change war in Iraq as “a cakewalk?” This feels a lot like déjà vu all over again.

See what dangers for the country Trump’s favorite network/most trusted source of advice is pushing on him below, from the December 31, 2019 America’s Newsroom.