CBS News Anchor Margaret Brennan Grills Trump: Why Don’t Facts Influence Your Opinions?
In her pre-Super Bowl interview with President Donald Trump that aired Sunday, CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan drew more than one clip-worthy quote. In one instance, she asked him about whether facts should influence his opinions, particularly in national security matters.
Brennan asked Trump about the conflict between him and his intel chiefs, and what “specifically was wrong with what they said.’
” I think- let me just say it wasn’t so much a report. It was the questions and answers as the report was submitted and they were asked questions and answers,” said Trump, before praising the accomplishments to date in Syria. He brought up Afghanistan as well, arguing that the U.S. is “going into our 19th year spending 50 billion dollars a year,” there.
“Now if you go back and look at any of my campaign speeches or rallies, I talked about it all the time,” he continued, as Brennan jumped in.
“You did,” she said. “You’ve been talking about- and that–”
As Trump continued, saying “I want to bring people home.”
“But that’s one of the questions here,” said Brennan. “Is because you have these strongly held convictions and people ask, ‘Well, why don’t the facts influence those opinions, if those facts change?’ And- and your director of national intelligence said ISIS still has strongholds in Iraq and Syria and will launch attacks from there.”
“You’re going to always have pockets of something. What– you’re going to have people, like the one armed man who blew up a restaurant. You’re going to have pockets,” said Trump. “But you’re not going to keep armies there because you have a few people. Or you even have fairly reasonable numbers of people.”
He is referring there to the enemy, saying that you can’t stay in a conflict just because a “fairly reasonable” number of the enemy remain effective.
“We’ve been there for many, many years. We were supposed to be in Syria for four months. We’ve been there for years. We have been in Afghanistan for 19 years,” he said.
Watch the clip above, courtesy of CBS News.
Click here for a full transcript from CBS News.
[Featured image via screengrab]
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