CNN’s Jake Tapper Hits Trump With Barrage of Video Receipts in Blistering War Commentary

CNN anchor Jake Tapper hit President Donald Trump with a barrage of video receipts in a blistering commentary highlighting Trump’s “ever-changing tale” about the war in Iran.

As the Iran war enters its second month, even some of the president’s most fervent supporters have begun to question the conflicting messages that have been a consistent feature of Operation Epic Fury.

On Monday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper weaved together video clips of those shifting narratives into a cutting essay on the war that included the observation that “Trump is kind of making some of this up as he goes along”:

TAPPER: We’re going to start in our “World Lead.” The status of the Iran war, as told by the Trump administration, seems to many an ever-changing tale. This morning, just before markets opened, Trump said the U.S. is in serious talks with — quote — “a new and more reasonable Iranian regime.” But, and there’s always a but, he wrote on Truth Social — quote — “Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not surely reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island and possibly all desalinization plants” — unquote.

Wow! A lot to unpack here. First, experts say that attacking civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under current international law. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about this this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Of course, this administration and the United States Armed Forces will always act within the confines of the law. But with respect to achieving the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, second point, we still do not know with whom exactly the U.S. is negotiating. No one has heard a peep from Iran’s new supreme leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: It’s very opaque right now. It’s not quite clear how decisions are being made inside of Iran.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Third, all in that same Truth Social post, the president went from saying there’s progress to threatening destruction. And this seems emblematic of the whiplash from President Trump’s back and forth statements and talks about achievement and talks about threats. Though, we should note, Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemingly frustrated with the news media, challenged the notion that there is any mixed messages or confusing objectives this morning on ABC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: I’ll repeat them to you now because I hear a lot of talk about we don’t know what the clear objectives are. Here they are. You should write them down. Number one, the destruction of their air force. Number two, the destruction of their navy. Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability. And number four, the destruction of their factories so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future. All of these so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: OK. So, I did write down those four things, and I would note that there are a couple things not on that initial objectives list that are now being named as objectives, not by Secretary Rubio there, but by other administration officials. For example, retrieving the actual nuclear material from inside Iran, which is reportedly being discussed now as a potential mission for U.S. troops on the ground. Number two, opening the Strait of Hormuz. At the onset of the war, the strait was open.

The point is it’s all kind of confusing because objectives are being added as the war changes and the enemy gets a vote and, perhaps, things do not go perfectly according to plan. So, two Saturdays ago, the president said if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours and allow oil and gas to flow through, he would bomb Iran’s civilian electric power plants, which obviously was also not on that list.

Either way, just hours before the Monday deadline that President Trump set, before that deadline expired, the president delayed the threat by five days and there was, of course, the caveat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we just keep bombing our little hearts out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Thursday afternoon, President Trump extended that deadline once again, this time by 10 days. No one can support the goals of this war and also acknowledge the confusing messages. President Trump has declared victory while arguing that the mission is not complete. On regime change, the president said that this would be the Iranian people’s best shot to take their country back. Then in recent weeks, President Trump said it was too dangerous for a popular uprising to happen. And then yesterday, he said regime change, that has already happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We’ve had regime change. If you look already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed. They’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead. And the third regime, we’re dealing with different people than anybody has dealt with before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, yes, the previous ayatollah is dead. But now, his arguably more hardline son is now in charge, we think. So, if the mission is just, as Secretary Rubio noted, the destruction of the air force and the navy and missiles and missile-making capability, it would seem that the U.S. would be close to accomplishing that.

But according to reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is preparing for more. The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, troops on the ground. President Trump is weighing deploying another 10,000 more ground troops to the Middle East region in general. And they are also considering a complex operation to extract, with boots on the ground, in Iran nearly a thousand pounds of uranium from inside Iran. We should note the president has not made decision on any of those options.

Again, one can want a denuclearized and democratic Iran and still wonder if President Trump is kind of making some of this up as he goes along. One can support President Trump and wonder if he’s fully aware of how often wars spiral out of control little by little with unanticipated responses by the enemy requiring increasing commitment. President Trump said he would end the Iran war when? When he — quote — “feels it in his bones.” When so many lives are on the line, that is a remarkably vague and impulsive metric.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.

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