CNN Anchor Calls Out Trump Allies With Barrage of ‘Not a War’ Video Receipts

CNN anchor Abby Phillip called out President Donald Trump and his allies over their messaging on the Iran war/non-war with a barrage of contradictory video receipts.

At 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, Trump posted an announcement that the United States was in the process of attacking Iran in a video message from Mar-a-Lago.

Since then, at least six American servicemembers have been killed in the fighting, and Trump is facing a widespread revolt from within his own base. Amid widespread disapproval of the attacks, Trump and his top officials and allies have offered a blizzard of different messages on the war.

On Monday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Phillip opened a segment on the war with a cutting montage of Trump allies arguing the war is not a war alongside clips of Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calling it a war:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: And we may have casualties that often happens in war.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I don’t know if this is technically a war.

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): This isn’t a war. We haven’t declared war.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: The secretary of defense, who calls himself a secretary of war, said today this is a war.

HEGSETH: We set the terms of this war from start to finish.

REP. BRIAN MAST (R-FL): Nobody should classify this as war. It is combat operations.

HEGSETH: War is hell and always will be.

REP. ANNA PAULINA LUNA (R-FL): Strategic strikes are not war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ABBY PHILLIP: I guess the Congress people that you saw in that clip are all convinced that it’s not a war because that would mean that they would have had to have done their job beforehand to authorize this. But it does seem like we’re in a war because we’re talking four to five weeks and we took out the leader of a nation.

MAX BOOT: Yes. And when you’re dropping bombs on a country and killing their leader, you are at war, and, of course, Iran is hitting back. So, obviously, we are at war. I mean, there’s just so many dumb talking points going around about what’s going on there. Clearly, we’re at war.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.

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