Chris Cuomo Delivers Stinging Monologue: ‘Serial Liar’ Trump Can’t Blame Iran Attack on Obama, Congress Must Put ‘Country Before Party’
Chris Cuomo delivered a pointed argument on his Wednesday night show that called out President Donald Trump’s lack of credibility and overall strategy with regard to his aggressive military posture toward Iran.
Zeroing in on Trump’s Wednesday morning address, where the president portrayed his brinkmanship with Iran as a win for the country, Cuomo dismissed, point by point, Trump’s bravado as empty — and risky — political posturing.
“Lesson one, declaring victory because we got bombed and nobody died, that is proof of no strategy,” Cuomo said.
The CNN host then noted that, the next time, the US may not be so lucky.
“Do we really want to repeat this process and hope the enemy misses again?” Cuomo asked. “Is that about caring about troops and our safety? To be clear, Congress has the power to declare war. The president, except in an emergency, is supposed to have congressional authority or at least buy-in. He has yet to prove it was an emergency.”
“Lesson 2, President Trump has to own what he does. He read something to you that was likely written by someone else. But it was also certainly not true,” Cuomo noted, before highlighting several false or misleading claims from Trump’s speech about Iran’s capability and the 2015 JCPOA deal. He went on to call out Trump as a “serial liar” whose attempt to somehow cast blame on President Barack Obama for a Iranian attack that was undeniably spurred by his administration’s airstrike on Qasem Soleimani as further eroding trust in our institutions.
“We should be able to rely on what the president and intel says as long as they offer proof. More importantly we should be able to come together because we all bleed the same way if attacked. Crude but true. We can’t, why?” Cuomo noted. “He spent his presidency bashing the very intel agencies he says are great and we must trust without proof. He won’t follow the rules that he demanded when convenient. Show proof. Forget about confidential and classified put it out there.”
“How do we fix it? I argue Congress has to put country before party,” Cuomo said, issuing a challenge to hardline pro-Trump conservatives, some of whom have chosen to smear Democrats as terrorist lovers or not so subtly suggest skeptical Senate Republicans are “empowering the enemy” simply by debating war policy. “Stop defending the president for lying and deceiving. If you can’t say you would say what he said, say it’s wrong.”
“Lastly, let the past few days be a reminder,” Cuomo concluded. “My brothers and sisters, we are all in this together. You know you felt it. Our troops are in harm’s way. Left, right or reasonable. If something happens here, and you better believe whoever gets hit will bleed, no matter the politics. We’re all susceptible to terror and capable of disagreeing without hating the opposition. We have real enemies. They’re not members of the opposing party.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
