CNN’s Kaitlin Collins confronted President Donald Trump about his administration’s ongoing bombing of Iran, asking whether the drawn-out conflict is “just the new normal for the American people.”
Trump accused Iran of violating the fragile ceasefire last weekend with attacks on a Cyprus-flagged container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, derailing all peace deal talks. In response, the U.S. resumed its bombing of Iran.
The president quietly submitted a letter to Congress on Friday to share that the war against Iran had officially resumed on July 7.
During a press conference from the Oval Office on Monday evening, Trump said he hadn’t reached the “conclusion” that a negotiated settlement is off the table, but insisted the U.S. will continue to attack Iran.
“We’re hitting them very heavy tonight, as you know,” Trump said. “We’re heading in. We have tremendous amounts of ammunition. We have numbers that we haven’t had in years, and we’re hitting them very hard. And it will continue, and we’ll see what happens.”
Collins pressed Trump on the timeline of the conflict.
“You noted that the United States is bombing Iran again,” she said. “I mean, you’ve been bombing Iran for months now. Is this just the new normal for the American people?”
Trump responded with an attempt to contrast the Iran War, which began on Feb. 28, with the Vietnam War.
“No, well, you know, we were in Vietnam for 19 years. We’re here for four months. So, I think we’ve done a lot. We’ve knocked out their Navy in a period of one month. We knocked out their Air Force. Their Air Force is nonexistent. We knocked out most of their missiles, most of their drones. We knocked out their drone manufacturing capability, about 92 percent. Their missile capability for manufacturing, we knocked out 89 percent. And they have a little capability, but they don’t have any capability for us. This is almost a military skirmish.”
He went on to slam former presidents, including George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, for their handling of U.S. relations with Iran while praising his own negotiating prowess:
Now, with all of that being said, you have to get people that want to make something. We had a deal with them two days ago and then they said, ‘Oh, we can’t make that deal. We have to negotiate it further.’ And this is what they’ve done for 47 years. The difference is nobody negotiated like I do. And this should have been done by Bush and Obama and Biden and people before them, frankly. It’s 47 years they’ve been ripping off everybody and really hurting and killing thousands of people.
Watch above via CNN.
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