Why did Trump decide to attack Syria? Just turn on your TV.

Just days before the New Hampshire primary last year, a must-win contest to keep his unlikely bid for the presidency alive, Donald Trump was doubling down on his opposition to admitting refugees from Syria and other countries known to be breeding grounds for terrorists when a supporter stood up and questioned how committed he really was to that pledge. Speaking at a town hall in Salem, N.H., the man asked if Trump could really look at Syrian children “aged 5, 8, 10, in the face” and say they couldn’t come to the U.S. Trump said he could. “I can look in their faces and say, ‘You can’t come here,’” he announced to cheers, arguing, as he would repeatedly throughout the campaign, that Syrian children could be used by their parents as a “Trojan horse” to get into the country to help perpetrate attacks on the homeland.