Best of the Program | Guests: Lara Logan & Rep. Chris Stewart | 1/8/20

Hey America, welcome to the program.

Today, big day for the podcast all about Iran.

And even at the end, both Stu and I agree, it was a good day, good day for America.

Today, things could change if there's a dirty bomb in Chicago or something like that.

But it's been the best case scenario.

But

the press

just cannot admit that.

Lara Logan is on with us and she'll talk about what's really happening on the ground over there.

We talked to one of the guys who was probably in with the president last night, talking about what to do next.

We go over the president's address so much.

Today, you don't want to miss a second of the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the blend back program.

All right.

I have been watching Iran

for at least 15 years.

Full disclosure, I was for the Iraqi war, and I was for it because I believed it was an attempt to pop the head of the snake, which is Iran.

Iran is the real problem in the Middle East.

It causes much of our problems.

It is a backward society that has destroyed the Persian culture and has destroyed the people of Iran.

And even those who were not or who were part of the revolution didn't want what they have.

Millions are marching in the streets risking their lives.

You don't see it because our press doesn't go to Iran.

Our press doesn't care to show it.

Our press decides to go to Iran when there are millions of Americans or millions of Iranians shouting death to America.

Soleimani,

Soleimani was a brutal

hydric.

He was a

brutal mastermind of terror all over the Middle East, responsible for at least 600 deaths of U.S.

soldiers.

But beyond that, he was a torturer.

He was a madman.

He was as sick as any of the Nazis were.

And so we killed him.

Now, we call it an assassination.

I guess the media does, because it was precision.

So we didn't blow up a lot of people.

Oh, my gosh.

Now we're assassinating.

We were being precise.

Isn't that what the world begged us to do?

Wasn't that the last problem?

We just lob a missile over there, not even knowing who we're going to hit, and we could hit innocent children, and babies, and puppy dogs.

And so we spent a ton of money to make sure that it hits the target we were looking for.

And that's not good enough now.

But it was the right thing to do.

Now,

I since have come back on my position on Iraq

because that's not what we were trying to do.

We were trying to nation build.

And our nation-building has got us into almost all of the trouble that

we're experiencing right now.

I mean,

When we were humble,

when we were a nation that was paying attention to just our problems, the world loved us.

France gave us a giant present called the Statue of Liberty.

Do you see any nation in the world giving us a present like that today?

No.

Why?

The Statue of Liberty was to show them to show the people of Paris, not America, show the people of Paris what could be done if you get everybody into the boat.

That's the same thing with

the Washington Crossing the Delaware painting.

That was a German painting, not meant for us.

We have the copy.

The original burned to the ground in World War II as the Allies bombed Berlin.

When we pay attention and we are humble and we stay out of everybody's business, we make a big impact because we lead by example.

Teddy Roosevelt changed all of that.

And everything that Eisenhower told us we should look out for.

We made a choice in the 1950s after the war.

We now have to have a standing army.

We never had one before World War II.

We have to have a standing army because now the world could be vaporized overnight.

War happens too fast.

There's no chance to be prepared for it if you're not prepared all the time.

But when they made that decision, he warned us.

A military guy warned us.

There's just going to be a war machine now that wants war.

There's going to be a war machine in our Congress, in our White House, in our State Department.

And what's worse is America is now going to start funding our universities.

And so those universities will also be indoctrination camps.

So he warned in 1959, look out,

pay attention, stay awake.

Well, we didn't.

And we have been on this foreign adventure forever.

And it's time for it to stop.

Now, how do I square this with

a long record on Iran?

Iran is filled with things, people that are called Twelvers.

They were so crazy that even the Ayatollah Khomeini during the revolution said, by the way, we got to get rid of all the Twelvers because they're nuts.

That's how nuts they are.

They were too nuts for the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Now, those same 12vers are the ones that are leading the Supreme Council.

They include people like Soleimani,

and they are true believers, hardline believers

of Wash the World in Blood.

Now,

let me talk to you about the Iranian people.

The Iranian people are no different than the people here in America.

There are those that are part of the hardline, those that believe that.

Those that last night were going, wait, more, more, more.

But the vast majority are the people who are saying, wait a minute, why are we on these foreign adventures?

They keep getting us into trouble.

If we would just mind our own business,

why are we spending a billion dollars a month on the coulds force with solemani?

A billion dollars a month.

Bread is 70% higher and more expensive than it was just a couple of months ago.

And you're sending all of this money for what?

So let's not lose sight that people are people.

Let's not lose sight for those of us who are old enough to remember when the Iron Curtain came down, we found out that the Russian people were not our enemy.

It was the government.

And the government was the enemy of the people.

Last night,

the best case scenario happened.

Iran attacked our

embassy.

We cannot allow people to attack our embassies.

Iran, especially, they have a history of it, 1979.

They took everybody hostage for over a year.

And then, coincidentally,

they were all released the day Reagan raised his hand and took command.

Last night,

Iran responded to us killing Soleimani, a guy who is clearly a very bad guy, a guy that I would compare to Heydrich or Himmler.

We took him out out because he killed at least 600 of our soldiers, and he has been torturing his way to success all over the Middle East.

I know

we were there.

We met with some of the families that his people, his Kuds force, had killed and tortured.

We met with one family whose

mom was killed in front of the two children and the dad, and as if that wasn't enough they took the six-year-old boy and took out drills and drilled holes in his legs.

He still can't walk.

That's who Solimani was.

I have no problem taking him out.

It was the right thing to do.

But the press and the left just wring their hands all night.

Oh my gosh, what's going to happen?

This is the World War III.

There's going to be a draft.

And I told you Monday, relax.

There's not going to be a draft.

This could turn into World War III, but I don't think so.

This is our best option at this point.

What happened last night was the best case scenario.

They lobbed missiles over.

They were not cruise missiles.

Cruise missiles are accurate.

Cruise missiles get the job done.

Cruise missiles, as they used in Saudi Arabia to take out their oil fields, those cruise missiles went a lot farther in Saudi Arabia.

They went from Iran to Saudi Arabia to the oil fields.

And if you look at the pictures, they hit dead center all of their targets.

What they launched last night was a missile.

What they launched last night was not a threat.

I don't even think they were fully loaded.

Several duds, and none of them hit their target.

Now, why is that?

Are they just incompetent?

Are we so arrogant to think that they're so far behind us that they can't even hit across their own border accurately?

Of course they can.

Of course they can.

This was them trying to save face last night with their hardliners.

Now I'll tell you more as we go.

This isn't going to work.

But that's what they did.

And they immediately went to the UN and said,

we're not wanting war.

We just wanted to retaliate for that strike on Soleimani.

We're not looking for war.

They immediately said a press release, this is it.

This is all we're going to do.

That's signaling we just need to save face.

leave us alone.

We're not going to kill any of your people.

Now, luckily, we have a president who, no matter what anyone says,

left or right, is not a warmonger.

He's been against these wars his whole life.

It's one thing that he really believes.

And his doctrine, even though it's unspoken, is, if you don't kill any of our guys, I'm not going to respond.

They took down our drone.

Many presidents would have responded.

He didn't.

Why would I respond?

They didn't kill any of our people.

Taking a drone out of the sky, okay, it's expensive, but I'm not going to kill people for that.

Donald Trump doesn't want war.

Donald Trump wants to be out of war.

Donald Trump is an American first.

Like that or hate that, that's who he is.

And it's exactly the right kind of guy to have in today and yesterday and last week.

I don't know if you watched Fox News last night, but it was a horror show.

If Donald Trump listens to the people on Fox News,

if he listened to them last night, this thing would, we would be in World War III today.

But he didn't.

They were calling for crazy,

take out their oil fields.

Crazy stuff.

The minute we heard that there were no casualties,

go to bed.

Go to bed.

Here's what Trump has to do.

Trump cannot respond kinetically.

He cannot respond with military.

Cannot.

Donald Trump cannot listen to the voices of the hardliners on Fox News.

He cannot.

Trump must stick to his red line of American lives.

Keep your powder dry and your cyber weapons dry as well.

Continue to weaken the regime at home in Iraq.

Continue to vocally support the Iranian people,

the ones who are actually rising up,

and then prepare for a non-military strike on U.S.

assets.

And I'll explain that.

And

the hardliners in both Iran and the hardliners, including the press and the Democratic Party, here in America.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

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Laura Logan, who is,

I think,

in my mind, an icon

of

reporting and what a news journalist should be.

She was with 60 Minutes and CBS for years and years.

She's won all kinds of awards, including the Edward R.

Murrow Award, for her reporting and her journalistic integrity.

You might also remember that she was in the crowd as Egypt

overthrew Mubarak

and

it was brutal for her.

I wanted to talk to her a little bit about how the media is handling all of this

and her thoughts right off the top of her head about last night.

Laura, welcome to the program.

Hey, Glenn, thank you so much for having me on and thank you for your very, very kind introduction.

Well, I mean every word of it, Laura.

Can you tell me what your thoughts are on how this has played off from the embassy riot, which was reminiscent of 1979 or probably closer to Benghazi, to killing Qassam to the response last night?

Well, what's very interesting for me, you know, having spent many years on the ground in the Palestinian territories, in Israel, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Jordan, fine guys, living in

Iraq, you know, I've traveled all over Iraq.

I've been smuggled into, you know, insurgent parts of Damascus and all that kind of stuff.

And so, you know,

what I am always struck by

when I see

these events unfolding is how important the context is for the conversation.

Because Persians, if you spend any time with Persians, what you learn about the Persians and Iran, you know, Iranians identify themselves as Persians because it goes back to the

time of the Persians, right, when the Persians ruled.

And they still see themselves through that prism.

And what I always try to do is to look at the world through their eyes.

So, you know, same for the Iraqis, same for all the people in the region who are affected by this.

And

the conversation that's playing out in the U.S.

seems very often feels like it's devoid of that kind of context, right?

Because we tend to look at things only through the prism of now.

And

I've been quite struck

for a long time by the United States's lack of action towards Iran.

You know, when you're on the Iraqi battlefield year after year after year, and you see Iran's role on the battlefield escalating and the U.S.

not doing anything over to counter it, where all the U.S.

efforts to counter Iran on the Iraqi battlefield were clandestine, right?

They were more covert.

And so there's an inherent dishonesty in all of the reporting, because we're still talking about the Iraq war, as if it was a war, you know, between the U.S.

and Iraqi forces.

But who in this conversation about Qasim Sulamani is asking why?

Why were Iranian militias killing American soldiers on the Iraqi battlefield?

Why were they there?

What was their purpose?

What was their justification what was their motivation no one is asking that no one's even questioning that and no one is talking about the fact that the Iraqis were protesting there were mass protests just a few weeks ago against the Iranians that were there the Iraqi people do not want them not do not want them there all we hear about is how they don't want us there but

we are protecting a lot of the Iraqis as well

that's very true and of course you know, Iraq is a mix of Sunni and of Shia people, right?

And the Shia, you know, like the Iranians are Shia right across the border.

So there's their loyalty and their faith, you know, in Shiite Islam, and then there's their national identity as Iraqis.

And then, of course, there are also millions of Iraqis who are mixed Sunni and Shia, right?

You might have a, you know, a one Sunni parent and one Shiite parent.

And we act like all of these people are a monolithic entity that all agree with each other.

And what we leave out of this conversation are, for example, all the Iraqis who used to say to me,

this person is not Iraqi.

And I used to say, well, what do you mean?

They're not Iraqi.

They're born in Iraq.

They're Iraqi citizens.

And they say, yes, but they have Iranian blood running in their veins, which was the Iraqi way of saying their real loyalty is to Shiite Iran across the border.

And their real loyalty is not to us,

it's not to Iraq.

And that was very, very interesting for me because you look at someone like Qasim Soleimani, he was Iraqi.

He was born in Iraq.

Mohandas, the Iraqi commander who died with him, he's another one that they said to me has Iranian blood in his veins.

You know, and

Al-Amari, the head of the Batar Corps who's now replaced Mohandis, who's now the most powerful Iranian ally

in Iraq,

he also, he fled Iraq decades ago, and he lived in Iran and really was trained by Iran.

And when Saddam fell, the Iranians sent him back into Iraq and he was tasked by Qasem Soleimani to hunt down every Iraqi pilot and significant

commander from the Iran-Iraq war and kill them.

And in fact, I sat down in an interview with him a few years ago for 60 minutes, and I read to him an American diplomatic cable that was signed off, offered and signed off on by the U.S.

Embassy and by the U.S.

Ambassador and sent to Washington.

And, you you know, I've never forgotten what it said,

which was this, you know, that

the U.S.

Embassy

and the military believe that

Almory was responsible for personally murdering two and a half thousand Iraqi Sunnis and that his preferred method of killing was to personally drill holes in their heads while they were still alive.

Okay, this is the man.

This is the man that was trained by Iran, that is one of their most important lieutenants and allies inside Iraq.

Okay, these are the people that we're talking about.

So what about all the funerals of all the people who died at the hands of Qasim Soleimani and his proxy forces and his commanders and under his orders and with the blessing and authority and funding and training, right?

What about all those people?

And what about the Iraqis who are celebrating his death?

What about Syrians who are celebrating?

Yemenis who are celebrating?

An Iraqi I spoke to in Baghdad a couple of times over the last few days said to me that every Iraqi in San Diego who

is now able to vote in the U.S.

is voting for Trump in the next election because they're so happy that he killed Qasim Soleimani.

And that's just a voice.

It's one part of the story that you're not hearing a whole lot about.

Well, you're not at all.

Laurie, you're also not hearing the voice of the Iranians, the millions that are risking their life to stand up, and the millions of people that are j I think in many ways just like Americans.

Their inflation has gone through the roof, and they're looking at a billion dollars a month going to the Kuds Force and the IRGC, and they're saying, I don't want any part of this anymore.

This is just causing us more trouble, and they want out.

They want relief from this.

And no media source that I know of is covering that.

That's well, I would agree with you on that, that no media source is covering that part of the story too.

Those people are completely left out of this conversation.

And not only that,

but some of those people, their voices are left out because they're dead, right?

I mean, the green movement, who remembers the green movement?

There's been, you know, really two significant protest movements that have risen up up in Iran to the level where they haven't been able to hide their existence.

Because

I'm always very, very cautious about speaking about what Iranian people and what they want and how they feel and what the situation is, because we know so little, right?

It's very hard to function and operate in Iran.

You do not get access to that country as a journalist or as an outsider unless the regime

specifically authorizes you to do so.

And when they do that, they have a specific purpose.

There's a reason they let you come in.

And they control what you see, they control who you speak to, they control what people say because people self-censor.

They're so afraid they self-censor.

So really accurate assessments over

how

the majority of people feel.

I can tell you what individuals feel because

I can from time to time speak to individuals and often in situations where I can at least have a high degree of confidence that I'm not being lied to, right?

But what we're not hearing, but what the Iranians could not hide, they could not hide the Green Movement, they could not hide some of these mass protests.

And what we do know is that those protest movements were brutally, brutally suppressed.

I mean, you know, hundreds of people were disappeared, tortured, imprisoned, murdered, right?

And who was responsible for making that happen?

I mean, the IRGC, the Qudspot, Qasim Soleimani, these people, yes, he was loved by many people in Iran, but he was also feared and he was also hated.

And those voices are, you know, they're completely and utterly written out of the current narrative.

Lara Logan, I'd like to continue with you.

I'm going to take a quick one-minute break and then I'd like to come back and talk a little bit about the media coverage here on

how distorted it is and MSNBC last night running the state television from Iran and then taking their word for how many Americans had been killed, which we now know is zero,

and what the motivation is.

What does the average American take from

this media today?

Back in just a second with Lara Logan.

Laura Logan

is with us, and

I don't want to dwell on this at all, but I couldn't help but see the ABC reporter

in the crowd in Iran,

you know, wearing her headscarf and everything else, and thinking she's in real danger, because those crowds can change, as you found in Egypt.

How much danger was she in yesterday?

And what kind of deal had to be made

for her to have that kind of coverage?

And is it responsible?

Well, you know,

I think it's unfair to ask if it's responsible, just in the sense that our job as reporters is to try to tell every side of the story.

And if I was still an evening news reporter or CBS foreign news reporter, I would have been...

I would have loved to have been on the ground in Iran and be in Martha Redditz's shoes and be reporting from the ground.

And I do have enormous respect for Martha and I know her personally, and I like her a lot.

But having said that, I mean, I would say to you that you're right, in any crowd, in any emotional situation like that, there's always a risk, right?

No question about it.

But let's not forget that Iran is not the average it's not the average country.

It's not like the US.

I mean,

everything is very carefully stage managed.

Now, you always have the risk that you could be caught up in a stampede, right?

Things can boil over like that.

And there's always a risk that if they that they allow you to be targeted, but things do not happen on the ground in countries like that most of the time without being orchestrated.

So when the Iranian government says, okay, yes, you're approved and you can come in, you've got a minder with you all the time.

This person is monitoring every single thing you say.

We call them minders, but let's be honest, they're Mukhabarat intelligence agents, right?

They're spies, and they're reporting on everything you say and everything you do.

And every person you speak to, every Iranian you interview, knows that that person is standing right there, right?

So those, and, you know, sure, it was like that in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

I mean, it was like that in Syria under Assad.

You know, I've done that many times, so I'm not criticizing Martha for that.

What I would say is that there's very little context.

They're not giving any context.

in the reporting and that's the problem that I have with this.

I applaud her for being on the ground and I applaud her for being there and I would love to be in her shoes.

But at the same time, where is the, you know, where's the that little bit of distance?

You know, what we have to do as reporters is we have to be right in that moment and be emotional and live it and bring it to life for the viewer, right, and bring you right there.

But then we also have another job.

Our other responsibility is to take a little step away from it and say, okay, what's the broader context?

And I used to argue with U.S.

soldiers all the time, right?

Because I, contrary to what people say, I didn't live with U.S.

soldiers in Iraq.

I lived with Iraqi people.

And when I would go to the bases with them, you know, and they would say, well, you reporters never tell our story.

You never do this and you never do that.

And you're so biased.

And I would say, look, I mean, it's great that you've employed these, you know, 50 people and you've built this well and there's water in the village.

But like, you know,

what has this done to move the needle for unemployment in the country as a whole?

How many Iraqis today, how many more have access to king drinking water didn't before?

Oh, yes, they all, they did before.

In fact, you know, the infrastructure has been destroyed and now fewer people have it today.

You know, I used to explain to them that there's a context in which you're operating.

And I have dual responsibilities to you, to the Iraqis, to the taxpayers back home, to the government that sent you here,

to the military that's trying to manage these operations.

All of these responsibilities compete and they're all equal.

And I have to be, you know, try to be fair to

everybody.

So I don't just get to tell your story and not bother about the context and that's what i feel is is happening in in the some of the reporting that i've seen from the ground there it's all about one perspective and there's no real distance to it there's no like you know nobody's putting it in context and saying hey wait a minute you know

wait a minute like but i i was chanting death to america before custom solemani right i and i understand i understand martha not having to add context while she's on the ground but when i say is was it responsible i mean maybe some of that in there.

As much as she can get away with, yes.

But back home, ABC should be saying, look, she's, you know, we,

you know, we, we, we are, uh, we made a deal.

She has minders.

She has people with her.

So she's bringing a certain context to the,

you know, to the picture here.

But they're just using it as straight reporting.

Same thing with NBC last night, running state television where they were reporting 30 soldiers.

Yeah, it's just stunning.

It's, I mean, that to me is just well, how about this, Glenn?

Okay, how about how do you know that the pictures they put on state TV show what they say they show?

Right.

How do you know that?

Like, you know, I was having conversations with various people, a couple of intelligence people.

They were looking and they were triangulating the trajectory of the,

you know, of the missiles in the air with the moon and looking at where the moon was in the past, you know, from Iran Iran to Iraq.

Because yes, there were missiles that hit that base, right?

But where were they fired from?

Were they fired from Iran?

Were they fired from an Iranian proxy inside Iraq?

I mean, were they fired that night?

Were those pictures of the missiles being fired?

I mean, maybe those pictures were of something else.

You know, there's a lot of questions about that because

the Iranian regime frequently puts out whatever it wants to.

I mean, they're masters of propaganda.

And what is very obvious here is, you know, when they put that out and they did that quickly and they had people cheering there, you know, at the launch site, that was for the people, right?

That was to satisfy, because what has happened here, this is the part that, for me, the most significant thing that I think is missing here from the news coverage, where reporters have really failed in their duty, is that the strength of the reaction to Qasem Soleimani's death is absolute verification of the significance of the strike.

Because they, you know, the media here seems to want us to have it both ways, where they want to say, this achieved nothing.

This will not impact Iran's capabilities in any way.

You know, it's not significant at all.

And then, on the other hand, they want to say, this is so significant that you have, you've now put us into World War III.

Thank you, Laura Logan.

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Thanks.

A man who I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't in a council last night trying to figure out what was going on and what the response should be, Congressman Chris Stewart, a member of the Intelligence Committee in Congress.

Welcome, Chris.

How are you?

I'm good, Glenn.

Boy, our year started out with a bang, didn't it?

No pun intended.

Yeah, I know.

It's crazy.

And I think that this is...

If it continues to play out this way, and there's a caveat on this or two, but this was last night the best case scenario for a response from Iran, was it not?

Yeah, it really was.

And when you look at some of the statements from their leadership saying they thought it was proportional, they don't want

to accelerate nor to make things worse, it's pretty clear the leadership is signaling that they themselves are not going to do anything further, although I think their proxies will.

They've been doing that for 40 years, but it really was kind of a best case that we could have hoped for at this point.

So we had people on television last night that I thought were crazy saying that we should go after and bomb their oil fields.

And I thought, geez, who is advising the president?

His doctrine seems to be his red line, American lives.

And if no American lives were lost, then we're fine.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry, Glenn, that's exactly right.

And you've hit upon the key on that.

And it really has been the president's red line.

And he's been very clear.

All through the summer, when they were tanking our tankers, when they're shooting down our drones in international airspace that are operating lawfully, when he's attacking the Saudi oil fields, he always said, and by the way, I know they've been signaling very, very clearly to the Iranian leadership: if you kill Americans, everything is different.

And through the late fall, we began to see them take actions that would kill Americans as they consistently bombed facilities where about half the people there were Americans.

And the president signaled again to them: you're going to kill some Americans if you continue doing this.

And if you do, everything is different.

And they did kill some American, American citizen, and things did change.

But hopefully, and I'm actually quite optimistic,

that this will now settle down and reframe their thinking.

And maybe we can even get something positive coming from this.

How do you mean?

What do you think we could possibly get?

Well, you know, our grand strategy is not just to continue with a 40-year low-grade war with Iran, going back to the embassy in 79 and every incident and dozens of them and the hundreds of Americans who've been killed in the intervening time.

I mean, we can say, well, that's just the way it is, and we'll just accept it.

Or we could encourage it, like Barack Obama did, and said, Here's a boatload of money, and here's prestige and credibility on the international stage.

And we now think that you're just another nation on par morally in the way you treat people like us.

Or we could say, Look, you've got to change your behavior, but if you do, we will welcome you back into the international community.

We'll relieve some of the sanctions.

We'll try to help the Iranian people.

But you can't keep doing what you've been doing for 40 years.

And maybe,

I know it sounds crazy, but just maybe this is an opportunity for Iranian leadership to say, you know, this is enough.

We really could modify some of the things we've been doing.

I doubt they're going to do that.

Yeah, probably, probably not.

Hopefully.

If they would have a proxy, so they have

one degree of separation or more.

And they had a proxy, go after an embassy, or go after a CIA station chief, as they've done before,

or kidnap an official someplace in the world.

How do we respond to that?

Does that take us right back to

where we were?

Yeah, you know, I hate to say it depends, but it really does depend.

And it depends on just an incredible number of variables.

Obviously,

this I can say with some certainty.

Their proxies are not a mystery to us.

When they operate through their proxies, we don't go, boy, I wonder who did that or on what what authority that took place.

We can draw these, connect these dots, and it's not a whole lot of dots you have to connect.

So they can operate through proxies, but they can't do it with impunity, and they can't do it with anonymity.

We know that it's them, and they know that we know it's them.

And I guess, Glenn, coming back to my point about it does depend.

I mean, there are so many gray areas in that of who did they capture, who did they kill, under what circumstances, and where.

And I think the best response is to just say it would be proportional, and it would be our response would be proportional, and it would be to

reinvigorate this idea that

there's a defense against this, so we're going to not incentivize them for this behavior.

So I think the president has

a few groups of people, five groups of people that he just can't listen to.

And

the Ayatollah would be well advised not to listen to them as well.

Hezbollah and the hardliners.

This is not going to satisfy the hardliners.

It's not going to satisfy Hezbollah because those are the diehards that want death to America, truly want death to America.

In the United States,

I would have to put our GOP hardliners.

A lot of them were on TV last night saying we should bomb the oil fields and everything else.

And I was thinking, that's crazy.

That's just crazy.

So don't listen to those hardliners, but also

the Democratic politicians who are so eager for failure here, it is insane.

They were immediately saying that this is the death spiral.

This is going to be World War III.

The press

was literally, MSNBC, literally taking Iranian state television and running it on the air and letting it go unchecked.

I don't know whose hardliners and whose freaks are worse.

those in Iran or those here.

Yeah, you've said much, and if I could respond to just a couple of things on that.

Number one is that I'm once again, and this is not going to shock anyone, but I'm just so disappointed with Nancy Pelosi, and this is why, and this is meaningful.

This isn't just politics as normal.

Nancy Pelosi had the opportunity last night to come and see the intelligence, which is irrefutable.

And yet she still went out and made this highly partisan statement about, well, this is implying that this is American aggression.

After seeing this intelligence, there's no way anyone in the world could honestly come out and say this is anything than what it was, and that was the president protecting American lives.

That is very clear.

And the second thing I would respond to, Glenn, is agreeing with you in the fact of the hardliners.

The good news is, is you know who agrees with you is President Trump.

The last thing in the world he wants is to get into any meaningful war or engagement in the Middle East again.

For heaven's sakes, that's what he's campaigned on, and that's what he's done since.

And he knows that.

And the second person, or even more than him, actually, who wants, doesn't want a war with Iran, is the Iranian leadership.

They know it would be suicide.

And I can't tell you how many people have asked me over the last three or four days, I mean, really worried.

Hey, do I need to go get my kids from college?

You know, are we going to war?

Was this?

And it's like, no, no, no, we are not going to be in a major international conflict with Iran.

We don't want it, and they don't want it.

And it doesn't have have to be that way.

We can respond appropriately when they kill American citizens as we have to.

But that doesn't mean,

and I'm confident that we won't be in a large-scale war with them.

I just don't believe that's in the cards at all.

Chris,

have you ever seen

I mean, I just feel as though between the media and, quite honestly, the Democrats, I understand the Republican hardliners that just, you know, they just want to regime change and everything else.

We got to stop doing all of that stuff.

And I understand who Iran is, but this is not the way to go.

I understand that, but I honestly do not understand.

I am very concerned that the Democrats

and

the media are almost cheering for Iran

over us, which is just it's suicide.

Is the divide really

that stark now that even in times when American lives are at stake, they'll just can they just hate Donald Trump so much they'll do whatever it takes?

Well, I mean, the early indications are that's exactly the case.

And I'll go back to my example of Ms.

Velosi.

The responsible thing for her to do after seeing the intelligence and having her questions answered with is to come out and say the president did the appropriate thing.

He had no choice.

She could not bring herself to do that.

And if she couldn't do it, which stunningly, we consider her one of the more responsible members of the Democratic Party now, which is unbelievable to me, but compared to many of the others, she actually is.

If she can't do that, then many of the others will not either.

And the media will not as well.

And I think it comes back to what you said, Glenn.

They're just so viscerally opposed to this president.

And anyone who supports him, his voters, anyone who has a kind word towards him is just their mortal enemy.

It's as if they feel that they would actually

have sympathetic feelings towards General Suleimani, who's responsible for

the deaths of hundreds of Americans and hundreds of thousands of lives from Syria through the Shia Crescent.

And

I hope this will pass.

I hope that

they'll come to their senses a little bit on this.

But the early indications are that, as you said, they just oppose and hate this president so badly, they just can't think clearly through these things.

One last question.

As a guy who's on the intelligence committee, a guy who's been in the Air Force and

high-ranking officer,

this letter that was leaked

that said we were pulling out, that was unsigned,

that is one of the most damaging things to our policies that could have ever happened.

I mean,

you couldn't be working for the other side and have a better thing happen

than at that point say, oh, we're going to pull out, which forces the president to say, no, we're not,

which

enables Iran to say, look, we're winning,

forces us to stay.

Is there going to be any consequence for this person?

Do you believe that that was just released accidentally?

I'm going to answer that as honestly as I can, and I just say, Glenn, I don't know, but we have to find out.

I mean, it was

a very troubling communication in the midst of a time when the communication should have been very concise and very, very clear.

And it clearly wasn't the president's policy.

It clearly wasn't the administration's view that, okay, well, we're going to cut tail and run.

And by the way, that's exactly what the Iranian regime wants us to do so that they can run blood and horror through that area.

We need to,

as I've said for several years now, I think we need to relook every place we have American soldiers over there and ask the question, is it essential?

Is it a necessary?

What are we getting for this?

But you can't do it

at this moment and you can't give it to the Shia militia and to the Iranian regime at this time.

So yeah, at some point we should look at that.

What are the purpose of the U.S.

troops in Iraq and how long should they be there?

But for that communication to have been leaked deceptively like it was and to send that kind of message, man, we'd love to find out who did that and what well wouldn't that be pretty easy to find out i mean who wrote that was that a low-level private who just didn't know what they were doing or i mean that had to have some weight behind it somebody who wrote that we should be able to find and they should be fired at best or i mean sorry at least

well and and i'm going to withhold judgment on this until i know more because i don't want to i don't want to say something without the facts but we need to find out and that's and and and that's just the bottom line we need to find out who did it under what circumstances what they were thinking.

It just wasn't what the president's policy did not reflect our policy.

And it could be, Glenn, that it was just misconstrued in the sense that they were going to reposition troops, and it might have been poorly stated.

But if they're saying we're going to reposition troops to better defend ourselves, that's very different than we're going to reposition troops to prepare for a withdrawal.

Well, let me know if you pursue it because I'd like to know the answer to that because I think this was this this

was really disturbing.

I've not seen that happen before.

Chris Stewart, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Congressman Chris Stewart from the great state of Utah.

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