Democratic Lawmaker Clashes with Fox Anchor Over Trump’s Iran Strategy

Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) clashed with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum on Monday when she asked for his take on President Donald Trump’s blockade order underway in the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. Navy implemented the blockade at 10 a.m. ET Monday morning after peace talks collapsed in Pakistan over the weekend.

“We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world, because that’s what they’re doing,” Trump told reporters outside the Oval Office after the blockade went into effect.

Crow said Monday afternoon he was concerned Trump was making tactical decisions without a clear strategy.

“One of the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan is that you can win every battle and every engagement,” the combat veteran said. “We never lost a single battle in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 plus years, but we lost the end game. A blockade is one thing, but do you know who actually benefits from a blockade? Russia benefits from a blockade. We just eased sanctions on Russia. They are making billions of dollars more. The demand for their oil has skyrocketed —”

“There is no doubt that Russia has had some short-term benefits in this situation,” MacCallum interjected, “but China has not, and China is very involved with Iran.”

“In terms of strategy, strategy is very clear,” MacCallum added. “I mean, the strategy is, no nuclear weapons program. No ballistics weapons program, and hopefully a crumbling, eventually, of this regime, and the hope for democracy in Iran. That’s the strategy.”

“I don’t disagree with that at all,” Crow said. “That should be the goal, but the way you achieve that is with a diplomatic agreement that is verifiable. There must be inspections —”

“We never had that,” MacCallum said.

“They have to be permanent and verifiable,” Crow said. “We actually did have that —”

“There were no anytime, anywhere inspections and you know that,” MacCallum shot back.

“As imperfect as that deal was, which was a flawed agreement, it is much better than where we are now,” Crow said of formalized inspections under Former President Barack Obama in 2015.

“There is no indication that they didn’t cheat on that deal all the way through!” MacCallum exclaimed. “There’s no indication of that. And we don’t know that because we weren’t allowed to do  anywhere, anytime inspections. It appears that they progressed and progressed and progressed on that program, until now we’ve got 900 pounds of highly-enriched uranium, a lot of what was happening during that period. That is the ‘dust’ that President Trump is talking about.”

Watch the clip above via The Story With Martha MacCallum on Fox News.

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