Mika Brzezinski Plays Decade-Old Clip of Her Father to Rebut Key Trump Claim on Iran War

MS NOW Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski played a 14-year-old clip of her father, ex-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, on Thursday morning to rebut a key claim President Donald Trump made in his address to the nation the night before on Iran.

Brzezinski introduced the clip by noting Trump’s ongoing struggle to sell the ongoing conflict in Iran to the American people.

“I think it’s an uphill sell for this president. And again, just facts here. It’s a president who hasn’t paid for gas himself, or hasn’t had to worry about what the cost of a gallon of gas is, and hasn’t served his country in the military. And on top of it, has been previously critical of the potential of other presidents invading Iran,” Brzezinski began, adding:

President Trump has said on multiple occasions that no one could have predicted Iran would attack its Middle Eastern neighbors if it was struck by the U.S. and Israel. Trump has said his administration was shocked by it. But back in 2012, my father, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, not only predicted it, he clearly laid out the global implications of a new war in the Middle East and America’s limits in controlling the outcome.

Brzezinski then rolled a clip from January 2012 of her father on the Charlie Rose Show, saying, “If the issues are posed in a way in which they have to, in effect, abjectly capitulate, then I think a great many of them will say, ‘No, this is a country of 80 million people.’ And they know that while we can inflict enormous damage on them, they can hurt us a lot.”

“Charlie, we have been now in two 10-year-long wars. We have wasted an enormous amount of financial wealth, not to speak of lives. Our position in the world has deteriorated. Can you imagine what the consequences will be for us if the conflict in Afghanistan expanded because of the Iranians, if Iraq was massively destabilized, if Bahrain was set on fire, if the northeastern oil fields in Saudi Arabia were attacked?” Brzezinski said.

“Do they have the capacity to ignite all of that?” asked Rose in the clip.

“To ignite? Yes. To prevail? No. But in the meantime, the consequences, the costs would be cumulative,” Brzezinski replied as Rose added, “And oil prices would go through the roof.”

“Yes, and the global economy will be affected. So we’re playing with fire here,” Brzezinski replied.

Joe Scarborough then jumped in and said, “So we’ve heard time and time again, John Lemire, from people in the administration, ‘Oh, we could have never seen this coming. Who could have ever seen this?’ Dr. Brzezinski saw this coming 14 years ago.”

“I must say also, the men and women who’ve war-gamed this — people like Dr. Brzezinski over the past three, four decades — have war-gamed this, have all come to the same conclusion,” Scarborough continued, adding:

We had an oil crisis in ’73, read another oil crisis in ’74, another oil crisis in ’79. They understood the chokehold that Iran had over the Straits, and the chokehold that would have over the prices of oil across the world.

Because again, children, if you’re staying at home and saying, “Well, it’s just ‘real baby, drill,'” that’s great, but oil — are you ready? Get your number two pencils out. Oil is a global commodity. If oil goes up in Europe and in Asia, oil goes up in America. So anyway, I’ll bet a couple of things here, just going down this list. This wasn’t hard to see. The first thing that Dr. Brzezinski said would happen — which of course the president and everybody else said, “Oh, we’re shocked that this actually happened” — Dr. Brzezinski said Bahrain would be set on fire, Saudi Arabia would be attacked, the oil fields would be set on fire.

Charlie Rose asks, “Can they prevail?” He said, “No, Iran cannot prevail. They can cause us significant damage, and we’re playing with fire.” That’s the reason why I had somebody who saw this Dr. Brzezinski clip — a journalist who’s been around for about as long as Dr. Brzezinski has been around — texting me late last night saying, “Smart guy, that Dr. Brzezinski.” This is why every president before Donald Trump did not go into Iran, despite the fact that they would have loved their legacy to have been toppling the Ayatollah’s government.

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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