Battle commenced in earnest when Trump took to Twitter in the morning — in keeping with his prior reliance on the social media platform for disseminating fiery rhetoric, the US president responded to suggestions that Russia would shoot down American missiles fired at Syria with threats, and an implied ultimatum, promising "nice, new and 'smart'" rockets would be "coming" for Bashar al-Assad. He dubbed the Syrian leader a "Gas Killing Animal".
Zakharova was not going to take the President's incendiary grandstanding lying down. On Facebook, she viciously and succinctly attacked the foundations of Trump's threats — and the US case for attacking Syria.
"Trump's offered Russia to stop the arms race. Great idea! Here's a proposal — start that by destroying all chemical weapons stock. The American one," Zakharova wrote.
The US President is renowned for being extremely fickle, and changing his views, stances and policies radically in the blink of an eye — and his next tweet seemingly completely contradicted his previous one. Rather than stating there was "no reason" for US/Russia relations to be so woeful, and implying Russia was the country at fault in the relationship, he attributed current hostility into Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into alleged collusion between the President's campaign team and the Kremlin during the 2016 election.