White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted President Donald Trump was not just making things up to justify his war in Iran.
Leavitt was confronted by CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes about Trump making claims out of thin air at the briefing on Tuesday.
“There are no U.S. leaders or Israeli leaders who are making those same claims, so is he making this up to justify his decision to go to war now?“ Cordes asked.
“The president is not making anything up, Nancy,” Leavitt responded.
“He is looking at this every single day based on intelligence, based on facts and based on intelligence that he himself and his negotiators have consumed based on their, again, negotiations with the rogue Iranian regime over the past year,” Leavitt added.
The press secretary went on to repeat the White House claim that Iran was going to attack the U.S., disputing the Pentagon’s telling Congress there was no intelligence suggesting Iran was planning to attack first.
Leavitt’s pushback that Trump was not just making things up came after Cordes asked a previous question at the briefing about Trump on Monday, claiming he decided to strike Iran because he believed Iran would strike the U.S. targets within seven days, and then bumped it down even further while trying to justify the war.
“Within a week, they were going to attack us 100 percent,” Trump said in Florida on Monday.
“Where is he getting that?” Cordes asked Leavitt.
“Well, that’s not the first time the president has said that he chose to launch ‘Operation Epic Fury’ because he felt as though Iran was going to strike the United States and our assets in the region first,” Leavitt said.
“This was a feeling the president had based on facts,” she insisted. “Facts provided to him by his top negotiators who had been engaged with the Iranian regime in a good faith effort.”
Her comments were very similar to the president‘s, arguing that he “thought” Iran would attack when he made the case for striking first on Monday at his press conference.
“I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would if we didn’t do this at the time we did it,” Trump declared. “I think they had a mind to attack us.”
On Monday, the president also suggested it was Iran that had struck a girls’ school in Iran with a Tomahawk missile, killing about 175 people, mostly children.
But when confronted directly moments later about his claim that Iran bombed the school and that not even his own Pentagon chief was backing him up on it, the president quickly retreated and acknowledged he had no proof.
“Because I just don’t know enough about it,” Trump said. “I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation, but tomahawks are used by others.”
