George Stephanopoulos Grills Marco Rubio on Who Trump’s Negotiating With in Iran: ‘You Call Them Lunatics’

Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos grilled Secretary of State Marco Rubio on who the “reasonable” partners were that the administration was talking to in Iran, given that he’d just branded the regime leaders “insane.”

The clash came after President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Sunday that Iran had already undergone “regime change” after joint U.S.-Israeli strikes had killed its ranking leaders, insisting that current leaders were “agreeing” to his 15-point peace plan. Tehran, meanwhile, denied talks as “unrealistic” and “unreasonable.”

Appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday, Rubio had just unloaded on the regime in justifying the ongoing operations against the country’s leadership and military.

“These people are lunatics. They are insane,” the secretary of state said. “They’re religious zealots who can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future, and all of their neighbors know that, by the way, which is why all of their neighbors have been supportive of the efforts we’re conducting.”

However, moments earlier, Trump had taken to Truth Social and doubled down on his claims, writing that the U.S. was in “serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran.”

Stephanopoulos, noting that Rubio had just accused the regime of being “insane” to justify strikes, pivoted to the president’s post:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You call them lunatics but the president just had this post where he says “we’re in discussions with a new and more reasonable regime” – let me try to pin you down on that, who is this “new and more reasonable regime? Is the United States in direct contact with them?

MARCO RUBIO: Well, I’m not going to disclose to you who those people are, because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran. Look, there’s some fractures going on there internally. And at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that’s happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great. Imagine in Iran that instead of spending their wealth, billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, had spent that money helping the people of Iran, you’d have a much different country. So we are always hopeful that that would exist over there. It’s unfortunate, the people of Iran are incredible people. The people who lead them, this clerical regime, that is the problem. And if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world. But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case. So we’re gonna test it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the president said they are, is that the case or is it not? I’m just trying to get some clarity on that.

RUBIO: Well, what I mean is, yeah, so you have people that are saying some of the right things privately. Obviously, they’re not going to put it out in press releases and what they say to you or put out there for the world doesn’t necessarily reflect what they’re saying in our conversations.

But at the end of the day, we have to see if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they’re the ones that have the power to deliver. We’re going to test it. We are hopeful that that’s the case. There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge in Iran have not spoken to us in the past, some of the things they’re willing to do, some of the things they’re saying they’re wiling to do. Obviously, they have to go do it.

We’re gonna test that proposition very strongly because we always prefer to settle things through negotiation and diplomacy. But we also have to be prepared for the fact that that effort might fail, that we are dealing with a 47-year-old regime that still has a lot of people involved in it who aren’t necessarily big fans of diplomacy or peace.

Watch above via ABC.

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