‘Is He Making This Up?’ CBS Reporter Flat Out Asks Leavitt If Trump’s Reason For Attacking Iran Is Fake

CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday if President Donald Trump was “making” up claims that Iran was about to attack U.S. targets in the Middle East before launching airstrikes.

“Thanks, Karoline. The president said yesterday for the first time that he had to strike Iran because he believes that Iran was going to strike U.S. targets within seven days, and then he bumped that down later to three days. Where is he getting that?” began Cordes.

“Well, that’s not the first time the President has said that he chose to launch Operation Epic Fury because he felt as though Iran was going to strike the United States and our assets in the region first. Again, I addressed this in the last briefing,” Leavitt replied, adding:

This was a feeling the President had based on facts — facts provided to him by his top negotiators who had been engaged with the Iranian regime in a good-faith effort. The Iranian regime was lying, deceiving the United States of America, clearly trying to continue their nuclear program to create a bomb that would, of course, threaten the United States of America.

Again, their ballistic missile arsenal — they were rapidly and aggressively increasing that by the month to a place where they would essentially build immunity for themselves, where a future president, or President Trump, would not be able to launch this incredibly successful operation. And so the president, again, as I have reiterated and he has said, was not going to sit back and allow the Iranian regime to threaten or to attack the United States of America any longer.

“But there are no U.S. leaders or Israeli leaders who are making those same claims. So is he making this up to justify his decision to go to war now?” Cordes pushed.

“The President is not making anything up, Nancy,” Leavitt replied, concluding:

He is looking at this every single day based on intelligence, based on facts, and based on intelligence that he himself and his negotiators have consumed based on their, again, negotiations with the rogue Iranian regime over the past year.

And the President and his team tried in a good-faith way to reach a diplomatic deal through peaceful means with the Iranian regime. And Iran chose this path of death and destruction. Iran wanted to attack the United States of America, and the President was not going to sit back and allow that to happen. He was not going to sit back and allow it to happen, and everyone in this room should be grateful for it.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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