Laura Ingraham Expresses Frustration With Iran War: ‘How Are They Continuing to Hit Us?’

Fox News host Laura Ingraham expressed frustration with President Donald Trump’s ongoing war in Iran on Tuesday, questioning how the Iranians were still able to strike U.S. targets if their military was destroyed.

Ingraham spoke with former State Department official Nathan Sales about the U.S. strikes against Iran on Tuesday in retaliation for the downing of an Apache helicopter by an Iranian drone. CENTCOM called the bombing a “self-defense operation,” claiming the move was a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.” Trump vowed to respond to the Iranian attack earlier on Tuesday, though he later claimed the move “wasn’t a big deal.”

The move came as a bit of a surprise because of Trump’s conflicting remarks and the 38 times the president has claimed that the two sides were close to reaching a deal. Fox News host Jesse Watters noted the frequency of that remark on Tuesday, claiming it had reached a point where he no longer understood “what that means.”

Ingraham made a similar remark a few hours later, questioning Sales on another long-repeated administration line.

“We keep hearing their military is destroyed,” she said of the Iranians. “But if their military is destroyed, how are they continuing to hit us? I mean, an Apache helicopter costs about, what, about $46 million?”

She later reiterated the question, pressing Sales on the extent of the damage to Iran and claiming Americans “can’t wrap their heads around” the continued strikes while so many claim Iran’s capacity is so severely limited. Sales said that Iran continued to be a threat despite “substantially degraded” military power.

Read their exchange below:

INGRAHAM: One thing that a lot of Americans can’t really wrap their heads about here is we keep hearing that they’ve been destroyed, decimated. The word is often used ungrammatically, but nevertheless–

SALES: It’s not one in ten.

INGRAHAM: And yet– yes, thank you. But, so it’s– we hear that, and we know there’s extensive damage. Yet these drones are lethal, and they’re easy to make. They’re fairly cheap, and obviously did some damage to us last night over Oman. How can we guard against that? How can we protect against that, given the stakes here, again back home, and over there?

SALES: Well, I think the Iranian military threat has been substantially degraded. It hasn’t gone down to zero, but it’s gone from, you know, one hundred maybe to fifteen or twenty percent of what it was before. So, they’re going to continue to be a threat, and that’s why–

INGRAHAM: Why have we left any military structure there? Again, I’m not an expert here. You are, but we seem to have hit a number of base points tonight and are still, perhaps. We knew where those were. Why did we leave any of them standing? If we wanted to just really get this done, why are they still standing at all?

Sales claimed in response that Trump had chosen to push for diplomacy, but Iran was instead continuing to be aggressive.

The president, his Department of Defense chief, and many others within the administration have repeatedly claimed that Iran’s military has been “decimated,” almost wholly crippled by U.S. strikes– though Trump also once remarked that the U.S. has “actually left their military alone.”

Trump again said in his Sunday interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that the Iranian military had been “totally destroyed,” though he added that the country had “some” drones and missiles left.

Watch above via Fox News.

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