MAGA Rep. Anna Paulina Luna got herself into a twist while trying to suggest that Donald Trump’s actions against Iran do not amount to starting a war.
Speaking on MS Now’s The Weekend Primetime on Sunday, the Florida Republican dismissed the “peace president’s” own description of the air strikes targeting the Middle Eastern country and insisted they were only “strategic strikes.”
“We are not invading. Are you seeing boots on the ground there? Because I’m not,” Luna said. “Targeting strategic military sites and invasions are two totally different things. Strategic strikes are not war.”
Host Catherine Rampell then had to remind Luna, a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, that even Trump is referring to it as a war in Iran while admitting that American service members will die because of it.
Fellow host Elise Jordan also interjected, saying Luna’s reasoning that a country is not at war unless there are boots on the ground “makes no sense.”
“So if someone bombed America, that wouldn’t be a war?” Jordan asked.
“Iran has killed thousands of Americans and murdered them. So by definition, they’ve already declared war on the United States,” Luna replied.
Anchor Ayman Mohyeldin also shot back at Luna’s remarks, asking her when exactly Iran had killed thousands of Americans.
Luna suggested that Iranian “state-sponsored terrorism, for starters,” has killed thousands of Americans over the past few decades, as well as referencing the three U.S. service members killed during the recent attacks in response to the war Trump and Israel started.
After arguing and talking over each other, Mohyeldin eventually told Luna that she had been saying a “lot of things that are incorrect” on the show.
“The United States launched a war against Iran. Iran retaliated against American service members. You can call it whatever you want to call it, but at the end of the day, the Iranians responded and killed three American service members,” Mohyeldin said.
In an eight-minute video message to the American people early Saturday morning ET, Trump announced that the U.S. had joined Israel and begun “major combat operations” against Iran.
Trump also admitted that the war, which has not been approved by Congress and has little support from voters, will mean that “lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties.”
“That often happens in war,” Trump added.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has also been killed in the U.S-Israel strikes, prompting retaliatory attacks on several other countries in the Middle East.
In another statement released on Truth Social, the president confirmed that three U.S. troops had already been killed, adding: “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.”
“That’s the way it is likely to be. But we’ll do everything possible so that won’t be the case,” the 79-year-old said.
The Daily Beast has contacted Luna’s office for comment.
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