Following the terrorist Qassem Soleimani's death on President Trump's orders, the media and the Democrat party have been like trapped rats, desperately rushing around to show that Trump is the bad guy in all this.  They've played up WWIII, shared the mullahs' grief over the loss of their pet terrorist, and blamed Trump for the Iranian decision to shoot down a passenger plane that had left Tehran minutes before and only four hours after Iran sent 15 ballistic missiles to Iraqi bases housing American troops.  With all those stories falling flat (and with Iranians in an uproar against their government for shooting down the plane), the media narrative is shifting to denigrating Trump's decision-making.

One of the first lies the media told was that Trump totally flummoxed his national security team when he elected to order a strike against Soleimani:

When President Donald Trump's national security team came to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, they weren't expecting him to approve an operation to kill Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach, Fla., to brief Trump on airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia groups.

One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take, among them targeting Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.

Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president's decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisers.

That meant the Pentagon suddenly faced the daunting task of carrying out Trump's orders.

When it became clear that this is not how briefings work — that is, that presidential security advisers don't just tack on weird ideas to their briefing for the heck of it — the media shifted to quibbling over what "imminent" meant in the context of "Soleimani was planning imminent attacks."  It eluded the media that "imminence" was irrelevant, first, because Soleimani was a legitimate military target for past acts (killing more than 600 American troops and tens of thousands of civilians) and, second, because he was known with 100% certainty to be planning future attacks.

With the squabble over the meaning of the word "imminent" failing to pay off with the public at home or in Iran, the media are shifting ground again.  News outlets now contend that any talk of future attacks, no matter the degree of imminence, is a lie.  The basis for claiming a new Trump lie is the discovery that not only was it a fake story to claim that Trump surprised his advisers by demanding Soleimani's death, but Trump had called for Soleimani's death months before:

President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago if Iran's increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to five current and former senior administration officials.

The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said.

That decision explains why assassinating Soleimani was on the menu of options that the military presented to Trump two weeks ago for responding to an attack by Iranian proxies in Iraq, in which a U.S. contractor was killed and four U.S. service members were wounded, the officials said.

The timing, however, could undermine the Trump administration's stated justification for ordering the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3. Officials have said Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, was planning imminent attacks on Americans and had to be stopped.

They have no shame.  Really no shame.

Here's what happened: unlike Bush and Obama, each of whom could have had Soleimani killed, Trump decided that killing Soleimani would curb both terrorism and the mullahs.  However, because he is not the impulsive, irrational man the Left likes to describe, he planned the matter well in advance and imposed a future condition: Soleimani would sign his own death certificate if he killed one more American.

Having made this decision, Trump patiently waited out Iranian strikes on Saudi Arabia and attacks on drones.  But when Iran killed an American, that was it.  Moreover, given the accelerating pace of Iranian attacks of late, Trump and his advisers knew with certainty, based upon past practice, that Soleimani was planning future attacks.  His presence on Iraqi soil, meeting with the commander of the Kataeb Hezb'allah troops that attacked the embassy in Baghdad, was proof enough if any was needed.

The media will not rest until they've managed to wrap themselves in a narrative that echoes that coming from Iran: Soleimani was a freedom fighter acting on behalf of Middle Easterners oppressed by America and terrorized by Donald Trump.