Sen. Mark Kelly Says ‘Random Group Of People Off The Street’ Could Do a Better Job on Iran Than Trump Administration

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told MS NOW’s Jen Psaki that “a random group of people off the street” could do a better job handling the conflict in Iran than President Donald Trump’s administration.

Kelly joined Wednesday’s edition of The Briefing with Jen Psaki to discuss the ongoing U.S. military operation in Iran. Psaki asked the senator, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former combat pilot, to share his thoughts on the administration’s justifications for the operation.

“Well, very quickly I started thinking back to 1991, when I was on an aircraft carrier heading across the Indian Ocean to get into the Persian Gulf at the beginning of the first Gulf War,” said Kelly. “And I remember my commanding officer– I was in an A-6 Intruder squadron. I was 25, 26 years old. And I remember my commander, one day before my first strike, talking to us about how they expect us to lose half of the airplanes.”

He continued:

Now that didn’t come to pass, but I just remember that leading up to that period of time, how stressful this was for him. He was our boss. He was the commander of the squadron. He was only 39 years old at the time. I remember when he turned 40. He was such a great guy, a great leader, and he was under so much pressure. And he wasn’t even the guy that made the decision to send us there. But you could just feel, just in his core, that he understood, you know, how significant of an issue this was that some of us might die. And he took it so seriously, and he wanted our airplanes to be ready. He wanted the entire team to be ready. And he wasn’t sure that was going to happen.

And I watch this group of people who were supposed to be leading our country, not just the president, secretary of defense and others you know, five people that were on the background on the slide here, and I’m thinking you could pick a random group of people off the street tonight here in Washington, D.C., just a random group, and they could probably do a better job than our government is doing right now with this. They don’t have a goal. There’s no strategic plan. There’s no timeline. And what this is likely to lead to is, again, a long war with a lot of dead Americans and no rationale for how this is helping the American people.

President Trump claimed on Monday that the operation in Iran was “projected [to last] four to five weeks.”

“But we have the capability to go far longer than that,” he said. “We’ll do whatever — somebody said today, they said, ‘Oh, well, if the President wants to do it really quickly after that, he’ll get bored.’ I don’t get bored. There’s nothing boring about this. ”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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