‘You Want To Bet?’ Geraldo Rivera Battles CNN Panel On Trump’s Reason for Iran War

Geraldo Rivera defended President Donald Trump’s reasons for entering the Iran war, asking a panelist if he wanted to place a “bet” after he claimed Trump’s reason would mean the military has been “lying” for years.

Comedian and SiriusXM host John Fugelsang argued on CNN’s Table for Five on Saturday that there was a “functioning nuclear deal” previously in place, referring to a 2015 agreement made by former President Barack Obama, aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sanctions relief.

If Trump is concerned about Iran getting a nuclear weapon, according to Fugelsang, it means the military has been “lying” for years, something Rivera immediately pushed back on.

Fugelsang said:

We had a functioning nuclear deal with Iran. Barack Obama’s probably the first person to ever earn his Nobel Peace Prize a few years after he got it. But many nations came together to form this nuclear deal with Iran and our military swore up and down for years that Iran was complying with the deal, up until the moment Donald Trump tore it up. So if you’re going to come out here and say, we have to do this war because we can’t let them get a nuke after this is the same team that tore up the deal keeping them from getting a nuke — they’re essentially saying you have to believe our military was lying for years.

“You want to bet on that?” Rivera, a once friend of Trump’s, said. “What if you’re wrong? And what if Iran is really, as the president indicated, on the verge of creating a shortcut to a nuclear weapon?”

“Well imagine the surprise of all the Republicans who believed him for years when he said no more wars, no more wars. He swore up and down,” Fugelsang said.

“The one thing that, to answer Geraldo’s question, I mean, we don’t have a lot of actual hard evidence about this one way or another. We do have the sworn congressional testimony of the director of national intelligence who said that after we bombed their facilities last summer, they had made no efforts to constitute their nuclear program,” host Abby Phillip added after some crosstalk.

“But isn’t the real question who gets the right to determine what the facts on the ground are? Isn’t that the commander-in-chief’s role?” Rivera asked, adding, “He may be wrong, but he’s the commander-in-chief.”

“I do think this is the central disagreement, right? Does the president just get to say whatever he wants and we just have to say, we trust you? I think the American people, we live in a democracy — I think that the American people deserve the right to ask questions, to demand evidence, to command proof. And the reason they deserve that right is because they have been lied to before. And you can’t just say, trust me,” Phillip countered.

“Do the American people have the right to tell the commander-in-chief how to wage what he perceives to be a war against them?” Rivera asked.

“They do,” former Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said. “This is taxpayer dollars. This is our money being spent on munitions to go and bomb Iran. Absolutely, I think the American people have a right to at least be explained why we’re in this.”

“We also have a right to free speech and to petition the government for aggressive grievances and there is no reason for anyone to believe anything these men say ever. They have lied so much in the course of this conflict,” Fugelsang added.

Watch above via CNN.

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