CNN’s Jake Tapper Presses Trump’s UN Ambassador On Russia Helping Iran Target US Troops: Surely That’s ‘Distressing’ and ‘Action Needs to Be Taken’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Mike Waltz — U.S. ambassador to the U.N. — about Russia providing intelligence to Iran which is helping them target U.S. service members.

In an interview with Waltz on Sunday’s CNN State of the Union, Tapper played a clip of President Donald Trump telling Fox News host Brian Kilmeade that he believes Russian leader Vladimir Putin is helping Iran.

“I think he might be helping him a little bit, yes, I guess,” Trump told Kilmeade on his Fox News radio program. “And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right? China would say the same thing. You know, it’s like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness. They do it and we do it.”

“Do you see an equivalence between the U.S. helping Ukraine defend itself and Russia helping Iran target U.S. service members?” Tapper asked Waltz.

“Well, Jake, we have known that Russia and Iran have this symbiotic, have this strategic partnership for some time now,” Waltz replied. He added, “I will just point out too, because a lot of critics out there are making hay of this, it was President Trump that put sanctions on Russia’s largest oil producer, Rosneft. He also put sanctions on Lukoil. The Biden administration did not do that for many years. They only did a kind of a pinprick action at the very end of the administration. He also took tough action on India. And now he’s put a temporary pause on that in order to calm energy markets. I think these are all pragmatic, commonsense approaches, while we deal with the Iranian regime.”

Tapper followed up — trying to get Waltz acknowledge that the U.S. needs to act to Russia’s involvement.

“But surely Russia helping Iran target our service members is upsetting and distressing, and action needs to be taken,” Tapper said.

Waltz, though, wouldn’t even concede that Russia in fact helping Iran.

“I’m not going to get into leaked assessments of what intelligence is being provided or not,” Waltz said. “I just can’t and won’t do that. But I will tell you, if they are doing it, it certainly hasn’t been effective because the Iranian air force, air defenses, missile forces, and Navy have been completely decimated.”

Watch above, via CNN

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