CNN’s resident pro-MAGA pundit has offered a strange justification for President Donald Trump’s weekend offensive against Iran.
“This is not an escalation. This is a de-escalation!” Scott Jennings said on CNN Sunday of the president’s decision to bomb three sites in Iran.
“Bunker-busting bombs are not an escalation?” host Katie Hunt shot back in disbelief.
Jennings doubled down on his position.
“Can we have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon?” he put it to the panel.
The attacks follow Trump’s repeated campaign pledges not to further embroil the United States in overseas “forever wars.” But the president joined Israeli strikes, which began last week, against Iran despite intelligence from his own officials suggesting the extremist Islamist state is not, in fact, developing nuclear weapons and that, if it wanted to, it would take a minimum of three years.
In a speech announcing the recent offensive, Trump said “far greater” attacks would follow unless Iran was willing to come to the table for a diplomatic solution, warning the regime to “remember, there are many targets left.”
Though the true extent of the damage remains unknown at this stage, the Iranian regime has since promised to respond to the strikes against its nuclear facilities, without clarifying what form that retaliation may take.
CNN political commentator Xochitl Hinojosa, who was also on Sunday’s panel with Jennings, pointed out that former President Barack Obama had diplomatically negotiated a non-proliferation agreement with Iran before Trump canned it during his first term.
“We had a deal,” she said. “We had a deal and he withdrew from that, and now he’s trying to get back into it.”
“Bribery and appeasement does not work with terrorists,” Jennings replied, accusing Hinojosa of attempting to “litigate the past.”
