Jake Tapper Warns Trump’s Confused Iran Rhetoric Is ‘Tearing at the MAGA Base’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper issued a stark warning on The Lead Wednesday night, casting President Donald Trump’s Iran dilemma and his rhetoric around it as a volatile gamble that risks fracturing the very base that launched him into power.

“There is no decision more important for a commander in chief than whether to take the nation to war,” Tapper opened, before scrutinizing Trump’s increasingly contradictory positions and running back the receipts from the past in an episodic exposé.

Tapper began with the argument that millions of Americans who voted for the president bought into his “bellicose words” in opposition to U.S. military entanglements, stretching right back to his 2016 campaign trail comments on Iraq.

In what followed, the host played back multiple videos of Trump’s campaign promises and criticism of wars.

“We should have never been in Iraq,” Trump said in one clip for Tapper to note Trump’s subsequent pledge to avoid “misadventures abroad.”

On the other hand, his hawkish tone on Iran, warning they must “never” obtain nuclear weapons, the host warned, appears to be pushing him toward a confrontation.

That contradiction is now playing out among Trump’s own loyalists. Tapper spotlighted a heated clash between Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who supports U.S. targeting of Iran, and Tucker Carlson, the MAGA firebrand who has long railed against foreign intervention. When Carlson quizzed Cruz on basic facts about Iran, including its population, the senator stumbled, then shifted gears to accuse Carlson of harboring an “obsession with Israel.”

“You’re asking why are the Jews controlling our foreign policy?” Cruz said. Carlson, clearly taken aback, replied: “Oh, I’m an anti-Semite now. Senator, you’re asking the questions.”

Caught in the crossfire, Trump has offered little clarity, Tapper argued.

Rolling back more clips, Tapper showed Trump waving off the intelligence presented by his own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who testified in March that Iran is not currently building a nuclear weapon.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump responded. “I think they’re very close to having one.”

Tapper noted the irony: “An interesting and rather harsh dismissal of what his own director of national intelligence says about the intelligence.”

But, adding that Israel has been warning that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapon development since 2015, Tapper offered: “That does not mean that Netanyahu is wrong this time, just that viewers can be forgiven for any skepticism about the urgency of this moment. Nor does that mean that DNI Gabbard is wrong.”

What it is causing, however, Tapper reported, is “an unfortunate lack of seriousness about so much of this unworthy of the decision at hand.”

Tapper concluded with a warning: “This is a time for gravity and purpose. And we, here at The Lead, we do not pretend to have the answers. As to what President Trump should do, we were not elected to do so. We just hope that the same skepticism that President Trump brought to these questions of war and peace as a candidate, the same willingness to challenge conventional thinking in D.C., we hope that is brought to bear.”

Watch above via CNN.