It’s less than week before New Years, but we’ve finally done it. We’ve reached peak 2018.

Over the past 48 hours or so, several different media pieces came out berating the President for not visiting the troops at Christmas. Little did they know, Trump had already planned to do just that, making a surprise visit to Iraq.

Some even printed their stories after the visit happened.

This was published 2 hours ago, right about the time @realDonaldTrump was landing in Iraq. Great work, @qz. #Caring https://t.co/O8MYDbQeRP

— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) December 26, 2018

Ms. Timmons tried to play it off as an honest mistake in a followup tweet, but perhaps the bigger lesson should be to not rush out every piece of anti-Trump garbage before you even confirm he isn’t doing exactly what you accuse him of not doing?

Just a thought.

Not content with admitting fault and just letting this non-story die, the media found a new angle to attack Trump (and American troops) from. This time is was the carnal sin of some soldiers having their MAGA hats signed by the President.

Troops are prohibited from "politicking" in uniform. Trump is putting them in an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable position here, because — unlike Trump — most of these men and women actually care about abiding by rules and laws. https://t.co/1qEvSaSCsw

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) December 26, 2018

trump signed MAGA 2020 hats. Safe bet our troops in Iraq aren’t buying and shipping hats to themselves 6,000 miles away in case he drops by.

Which means rbis was another taxpayer funded trump commercial. And unethical.

Right @waltshaub?

Next Up: A fundraising tweet. pic.twitter.com/XNoIUdSGJa

— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) December 26, 2018

This narrative lasted a few hours, with several dozen blue-check morons letting us know how illegal this all was. Later, The Hill reported that the hats were indeed owned by the soldiers already and that the President didn’t in fact bring them. There were no campaign law violations. Just a President, not currently running for re-election, signing stuff when requested.

Already see some Democrats angry Trump signed MAGA hats in Iraq but soldiers brought the hats themselves and asked for them to be signed so they’re really just upset at soldiers for having different political views. It’s the holiday season, they should try not to be the Grinch. pic.twitter.com/JqcfVTSn1c

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) December 26, 2018

Much to the left’s disappointment, Trump won’t be headed to prison for the crime of providing soldiers in Iraq with tacky red hats. We can all sleep easy tonight.

It didn’t end there though. With all the previous narratives busted, they needed a new one. The next step? Tattle on troops who had MAGA hats and a Trump flag and accuse them of violating DoD Directives on political activity.

CNN (because of course) led the way with this report.

Video footage and the written report of Trump's visit with service members in Iraq showed signing of hats and a "Trump 2020" patch.

But troops' requests for the autographs could brush up against Department of Defense guidelines for political activities. https://t.co/jUUqF91bcX

— CNN (@CNN) December 27, 2018

Followed by others…

Trump flag (she dropped it after she saw me taking a photo) pic.twitter.com/LhPwUNdEK3

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) December 27, 2018

Suddenly, every know-nothing twitter dweller who’s never done a push-up in their life became an expert on military discipline…

https://twitter.com/melnic92592/status/1078132346254090241

Seriously, this is strictly forbidden under military rules. Politicking not permitted. https://t.co/xRgaAbDUqw

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) December 27, 2018

Of course, the truth is much more nuanced. There is no election right now. The President is not currently filed as a candidate for anything nor are there any filed opponents. Whether there is even any violation here at all is not certain.

In fact, former President Obama signed autographs of himself on the cover of TIME while visiting troops. Michelle Obama did the same with magazine covers of herself. Not once did CNN rush to let us know how it might violate DoD guidelines. No brave firefighter journalists ran to Twitter to let us know of potential illegality by the President.

Why? Because it’s an incredibly petty and small thing to do. These troops are spending Christmas away from their families (some were at the stopover in Germany). Taking pictures of them and then running to throw them to the twitter mob is the height of ass-hatery. To be sure, the responses to some of the above tweets are viscous and awful enough that I’m not going to post them here. There are people demanding these soldiers be thrown in jail, calling them traitors, and other crap you’d expect for the cesspool that is anti-Trump Twitter.

Is it any wonder no one outside of the beltway can stand the media and it’s members? How shallow must your life be to think going after soldiers on Christmas over this was a worthy endeavor?

With any luck, SMOD will finally make it’s appearance in 2019 and stop this madness.

So we’ve moved from the “Trump hates the troops because he didn’t visit them on Christmas” part of the news cycle to “let’s ruin that one service-member’s career because she was holding a Trump flag,” do I have this right?

— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) December 27, 2018