CNN’s Abby Phillip Tells Scott Jennings ‘Stay Safe!’ Amid Iranian Missile Attack

CNN anchor Abby Phillip cautioned GOP analyst Scott Jennings to “stay safe” after he recounted taking shelter from the harrowing Iranian missile attacks on Israel.

Tensions exploded in the Middle East this week when Israel launched preemptive strikes on Iran that had the Trump administration scrambling for a unified message. Jennings has been in Israel and was there when the Iranian counterattack began.

On Friday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Jennings and his sometime foil were reunited remotely for a segment on the strikes, and their underlying affection was evident throughout the conversation:

ABBY PHILLIP: And now, normally, you might see Scott Jennings at this table in the studio here, but he’s actually on a planned trip to Israel and he joins us from there.

So, Scott, tell us what it has been like over the last, you know, 24 hours or so, as both — you’ve watched Israel carry out these strikes and now are experiencing the retaliation from Iran.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, first of all, it’s good to hear your voice, my friend, and thanks for having me. It’s about 4:00 in the morning here in Israel. You can see over my shoulder. Now, this is the Sea of Galilee. I’m in the city of Tiberius. It’s dawn here in Israel, and you open the show by saying that there were missile attacks in Northern Israel. You’re right. As we were setting this up, we had air raid sirens here in Tiberius. We heard booms. I didn’t see anything in the sky, just a few minutes ago, but certainly heard the impacts of the missile strikes.

A few hours ago, over my head, directly over my head in this hotel, over this balcony, I witnessed missiles coming in and also the interception of those missiles. And I was able to track them across the sky and watched the pieces fall out over some mountains and hillsides that are up here, just on the other side of the road from my hotel.

So, what it’s been like is nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. I mean, for most Americans, military things, terrorism things, you know, things of this nature happen a long way away, and we watched them on our televisions. I was watching them from right underneath where it was happening. And you get a real sense of what the people of Israel live with on a daily basis.

I’ve been traveling here for a week. Earlier this week, I was having a dinner with some people in Jerusalem. There was an air raid, siren. There was a missile announcement. We all went down into a bomb shelter. We stayed there for a few minutes. We came back up afterwards. They live with this every day.

Now, this war with Iran is an escalation, certainly, and this is a higher level, I think, of anxiety. But for Israelis, this is part of daily life, being surrounded by people who effectively want to annihilate your country.

PHILLIP: I mean, do you get the sense that Israelis now are actually expressing that higher level of anxiety? I mean, do you get the sense that they feel like this moment is very different from what they’ve experienced before?

JENNINGS: Certainly. I mean, you get the feeling just talking to people here that, you know, this is different than the normal day-to- day anxieties of rocket attacks that come in from the north, like from Hezbollah or that come in from the Houthis in Yemen, although those certainly can lead to destruction, and certainly serious injuries. But now we’re at war.

And you also sense resolve from the people that you talk to here. I mean, you know, the position they’re in, especially since October the 7th, you know, they’re living with terrorism in their own homes and their own neighborhoods, they’re living where Iran shooting missiles over, they’re living with Iran terror proxies that have the capability of shooting rockets into the country. So, they’re surrounded and they see Iran and the leadership in Tehran is the head of the octopus.

And so what I have sensed in my conversations with people here is that this confrontation is 20, 25 years in the making. There is real resolve to finish the fight and that they’re not going to live under this constant threat of being annihilated by Iran and its terror proxies anymore.

PHILLIP: All right. Scott Jennings, please stay safe where you are. We’ll see you when you’re back here.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.