Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

‘Not That Hard’: It Takes Mark Halperin, Former Dem Strategist Just 2 Minutes To Fix Dems’ ‘Flat-Footed’ Iran Response

Screenshot/Youtube/2Way

Former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine and 2Way host Mark Halperin called out Democrats Monday for their “flat-footed” response to the American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for President Donald Trump to be impeached over the strike, while other Democrats are seeking to force a vote on a resolution to prevent further strikes without congressional authorization. Turrentine bemoaned the fact Democrats appeared opposed to the idea of using military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“I wish we would have said God bless the troops, right? We got in, we got out, they are safe, they are courageous, we are the best military in the world, we are so grateful for them,” Turrentine said, Halperin cutting in with, “Two, Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, we all agree.”

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“Number two a longtime principle of our party, you know, and we’ve worked to facilitate this with sabotage and stuff is that Iran can’t have the nuclear weapon and then number three we have a lot of questions about what comes next,” Turrentine said. “We expect full intelligence briefings if you want to take a hit a hit at them you could have said, ‘We are very disappointed that Jim Himes and Mark Warner, the two Democrats in the gang of eight, were not given a heads up.’”

CNN initially reported that congressional Democrats had not been briefed about the strike, but later issued a correction after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt disputed the claim.

“Just say in the best spirit of American tradition, the president is not a dictator, he doesn’t get to decide when we go to war the Constitution’s clear,” Halperin said. “We’d urge the president to do this in a bipartisan way respecting the prerogatives of Congress going forward. It’s not that hard.”

“By the way, you hold a caucus meeting and you say, ‘Guys this may happen. I don’t want anyone putting out anything about impeachment, I don’t want any… I will put the statement out and you follow,’” Turrentine added. “Now, if somebody goes rogue there are ways to punish them, but the fact that they seem so flat-footed and all the progressive voices went flying out into the ecosystem is just… you want to bang your head against the wall and it’s like immigration, ‘Let’s get rid of ICE,’ ‘Let’s pull their funding’ and the leadership sits there silent and Fox and everyone’s going to run this on, you know, campaign ads.”

The United States struck facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan related to Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons early Sunday local time, using as many as 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators in the operation, which involved a 37-hour flight by seven B-2A Spirit bombers.