A MAGA senator tried desperately to justify Donald Trump’s big Iranian lie in a toe-curling segment on CNN.
Last summer, the president claimed to have wiped out Iran’s nuclear facilities in a double-team strike with Israel. He said the Islamic Republic had been just “weeks away” from developing a nuclear weapon.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth joined in, boasting that U.S. forces had “obliterated” Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.
However, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, declared this week that Iran’s enrichment level has reached “60 percent” and the country is “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was rolled out to defend the apparent doublespeak.
Mullin insisted that the administration is not interested in regime change. He said that a “nuclear Iran is bad for the entire world.”
“They said they were done trying to build a nuclear weapon, yet they‘re obviously trying to rebuild it. We‘re not going to let that happen,” he added.
Collins was not convinced. “Right, but if we obliterated it, we being the United States last summer, then why are you worried about it right now?” she asked.
Mullin then rolled out a wild analogy. “Because they‘re rebuilding it and you can see them rebuilding it, but it was obliterated, but it doesn‘t mean you can‘t rebuild. I mean, people have car accidents and obliterate their bones and their legs and yet they can still put you know, they can still put metal back in them and walk again.”
Collins: “But I think if it was obliterated in June, how is it February and we’re now, as Steve Witkoff put it, ‘a week away from Iran having this.’”
Mullin said that although he isn’t contradicting Witkoff, he has not seen the reports that informed that comment.
And despite earlier saying that the Trump administration did not want to initiate regime change, he added, “And by the way, if it takes us removing the Ayatollah (Supreme Leader of Iran) from keeping the nuclear program from moving forward, then that‘s not off the table, but we would prefer diplomacy.”
Collins pointed out the contradiction and asked how far the senator would “support that going.”
He said he doesn’t think “boots on the ground is necessary,” but supported taking out the Ayatollah with an air strike if it was deemed necessary.
“Now that he is pursuing it [nuclear readiness], the one person that‘s driving this is Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei]. That one person may have to be removed, but we don‘t think he‘s suicidal. But maybe he is,” he explained.
Towards the end of the chat, Collins once again pulled up the senator on why he was still saying that something that was allegedly “obliterated” just months ago is already, by some estimates, nearly repaired.
He said, “I guess I‘ve already explained that. How do you rebuild your legs after you shatter them? How do you rebuild a house after it‘s been knocked down by a tornado or a hurricane? You can rebuild things. The foundation may still be there. You can build a lot back on a foundation once the top of it is removed. If the structure of the foundation is there, they can start rebuilding.”
Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are heading to Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday for talks with Iranian officials.
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