‘That Clip Just Almost Gave Me a Rage Stroke’: Chris Hayes Airs 2003 Video of Lindsey Graham Demanding War – Just Like Now

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes invited viewers to join him in a déjà vu moment on Wednesday night, as some of the same Republicans who clamored for war with Iraq in 2003 are now doing so with Iran.

Last week, Israel bombed Iranian nuclear facilities and assassinated military leaders and nuclear scientists in a series of strikes across the country. President Donald Trump had urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack until U.S. negotiations with Iranian officials had run their course. Netanyahu pulled the trigger anyway.

Nevertheless, Trump has indicated that the U.S. may join Israel’s ongoing attacks on Iran. And in less than a week, American media pundits have gone from barely discussing Iran to debating whether the U.S. should bomb it. The issue has split the MAGAverse, though Republican lawmakers have either publicly expressed support for military action or stayed mum on the issue. Only Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has come out against such a move.

On Wednesday’s All In, Hayes took a trip down memory lane.

The host played a clip of Bush speaking in October 2002, where the then-president gave his now-discredited case for war against Iraq, which Bush falsely claimed had weapons of mass destruction. That snippet was followed by a clip of then-Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) making the case for war.

“I believe that Saddam Hussein has been giving aid and comfort, training and assistance to Al Qaeda murderers, that he has weapons of mass destruction,” Graham said two weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. “He is lying when he says he doesn’t. And he will never voluntarily disarm. Five hundred inspectors, 5,000 inspectors are not gonna make him disarm. He is a danger to our country and the world. He has killed his own people. And you’re not gonna disarm him by diplomacy. It’s gonna take force.”

Hayes offered a deadpan reaction.

“That clip just almost gave me a rage stroke,” he said. Hayes went on to say that Trump appealed to Republican voters in part by slamming Bush’s war as “a big, fat mistake.” Now, however, Trump is mulling an attack on a country that his own Director of National Intelligence testified that Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Watch above via MSNBC.