Ever since Iran and the United States agreed to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) which theoretically brings an end to hostilities, pending 60 days of further negotiations, the criticism leveled at President Trump has been non-stop, with some even coming from Republicans, but it's been the left wing media and their platformed guests that have been leading the charge. One of the most extreme examples of that took place Friday on CNN's Inside Politics, as fill-in Host Phil Mattingly welcomed in New Jersey Democrat Senator Cory Booker.
Mattingly got things rolling with a question that Booker would never answer.
MATTINGLY: I think one of the things that I've been trying to figure out here is understand the opposition, understand the legitimate and genuine concern with the MOU that we've seen up to this point. What did you see as alternatives, given that we were here, whether you opposed it at the beginning or not?
BOOKER: What I didn't expect is when the President said in February when he started this ill-conceived war, he said, I want unconditional surrender. I didn't know that it would be him being the one that was surrendering unconditionally.
Booker then followed with almost every left wing talking point in existence.
BOOKER: Iran right away is going to be able to sell oil on the open market. Right away, they get relief from sanctions, which means they'll get billions of dollars, much of which they didn't have before. All we get out of this deal is really nothing, just getting the Strait of Hormuz open.
So we are seeing them get all the gains, and us, who've spent $50 to $100 billion of taxpayer money, who our own taxpayers have then been paying higher costs at the pump, higher costs for groceries, that has not gone down yet. We've lost 14 American soldiers, and we have nothing to show for it except for a promise that we'll negotiate over the next 60 days....Iran is coming out of this better off, and we are far, far worse off, every American citizen, and how their own lives are going could say we're worse off than we were before Donald Trump started.
After a back and forth on gas prices, which have been falling since the announcement of the MOU, Booker went back to his Trump has surrendered narrative.
BOOKER: It was one of the worst ill-conceived decisions I've seen a President make in my lifetime. And now the way he's getting us out of it is by surrendering all American authority, giving up all of our leverage, giving them everything they want and actually making our adversary stronger before and us as a nation weaker in our national security.
Rather than point out to Booker that he did not answer his original question, or point the losses suffered by Iran at the hands of the U.S. and Israel, or challenge him on his claim of unconditional surrender by the U.S., Mattingly moved on to our relationship with Israel, and started by playing clips from President Trump and V.P. Vance.
TRUMP CLIP: Israel's fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut.
VANCE CLIP: If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.
Booker then unleashed on Trump and Netanyahu, big time.
MATTINGLY: Do you agree with the sentiment that they're sharing there?
BOOKER: The two of the worst administrations of all democratic governments on the planet Earth right now are the Netanyahu administration and the Trump administration, both led by criminals. Remember our President, first in history to have dozens of felony convictions. So we have two criminals leading nations and acting in deeply immoral ways. And so this to me is the chickens coming home to roost. Israel is less safe and America is less safe because of immoral leaders that made horrible decisions.
Mattingly didn't bother to point out that Prime Minister Netanyahu has never been convicted of any crime, so Booker kept going, seeming to express pleasure that, in his view, the war with Iran was a failure.
Not only did Mattingly allow Booker to spew his outrageous comments about the U.S. and Israel unchallenged, not a negative word was uttered about Iran or its terrorist regime by Mattingly or Booker. This is CNN.
