Chris Wallace Grills WH NatSec Advisor: Why Did Trump Tell Laura Ingraham About Iran’s Threat to Embassies, But Not Congress?

Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed White House National Security advisor Robert O’Brien on President Donald Trump’s claims about Iran and the administration’s domestic handling of the situation.

The conversation began with Wallace noting the Iranians launching protests against their government following the admission that their missile system shot down the Ukrainian plane as it flew out of Tehran. When asked if Trump can do anything to aid the demonstrators, Esper referred to Trump’s tweet of support, saying “I’m told that’s the world record for number of likes on social media for a Farsi-language tweet.”

From there Wallace turned to the interview Trump gave to Laura Ingraham days ago, the one where POTUS claimed four U.S. embassies faced an imminent threat of attack from Iran before the death of Qasem Soleimani. Wallace noted that members of Congress were briefed just last week on the intelligence behind the Soleimani airstrike, and the skeptics of Trump’s decision say “there was not a single mention” about the threat to embassies.

“Why is [Trump] saying it on television, but top officials didn’t tell members of Congress?” Wallace asked.

O’Brien answered that the administration can’t release the information about that without possibly losing their source of intel, and that the president has been “consistent” about the “severe threats” that have been leveled against America.

“It does seem to be a contradiction,” Wallace continued to press. “He is telling Laura Ingraham, our esteemed colleague, but in a 75 minute classified briefing, your top national security people never mentioned this to members of Congress, why not?”

“I wasn’t at the briefing and I don’t know how the Q&A went back and forth,” O’Brien answered. “Sometimes it depends on the questions, I don’t know, I wasn’t there. All I can tell you was we’ve been clear from the start there were very significant threats to American facilities in the region and to American military officials and also to U.S. diplomats and I think that is consistent with what the president is saying now.”

“Would you agree with what the president said that there were specific imminent threats to four U.S. embassies?” Wallace followed up.

“It is always difficult, even with the exquisite intelligence we have, to know exactly what the targets are,” O’Brien answered. “But it certainly is consistent with the intelligence to assume they would have hit embassies in at least four countries.”

Watch above, via Fox News Sunday.