‘This Is My Press Conference’: Marco Rubio Spars With Manu Raju on His Claim About Iran And Israel

Secretary of State Marco Rubio blasted the media and duked it out with reporters, including CNN’s Manu Raju, on Tuesday over a statement on Iran and Israel he claims the media is “misrepresenting.”

At a Tuesday press conference, Rubio was asked multiple times about a statement many took as the secretary of state suggesting Israel was ultimately behind the decision to strike Iran.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio told reporters after a congressional meeting on Monday. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

After already accusing one reporter of taking his quote out of context by saying he was suggesting Israel’s coming actions forced the U.S. to take action, Rubio was confronted again on it, this time by Raju.

“Mr. Secretary, I want to just clarify what you said, I just want to clarify what you said,” Raju said as Rubio jumped in.

“There’s nothing to clarify,” the secretary said, telling Raju he needs to “read the whole statement.”

“Your quote is, we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that would precipitate an attack,” Raju began reading.

“I understand,” Rubio said, cutting in.

The secretary then shut Raju down as the reporter continued asking him to clarify the quote.

“Hold on a second. Let me answer,” he said, “because this is my press conference.”

Rubio had earlier accused media outlets of only clipping a portion of what he said and some reporters of attributing a “false statement” to him.

He explained:

You guys can misrepresent it, but I was asked a specific question yesterday. The bottom line is this, the president determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple, guys. We are not going put Americans’ troops in harm’s way. If you tell the president of the United States that if we don’t go first, we’re going to have more people killed and more people injured, the president’s going to go first. That’s what he did, that’s what the president will always do. He will always put the safety and security of men and women in uniform and of all Americans before anything else. He’s always going to do that. And that’s why he did here.

President Donald Trump also denied on Tuesday suggestions that Israel “forced” his administration’s hand.

“No, I might’ve forced their hand,” the president said. “You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first, they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first, I felt strongly about that.”

Watch above via CNN.

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