Meghan McCain went to battle against Elizabeth Warren over the assassination of Qassem Soleimani on “The View” Tuesday.
Just one day after McCain defended President Donald Trump’s targeted killing of the Iranian military commander, Sen. Warren appeared on the morning talk show to further discuss the controversial move. And McCain was determined to get Warren to admit whether or not she believed Soleimani to be a terrorist.
McCain — who previously expressed that she was “happy” Soleimani was “blown up” — first praised Warren before confronting the 2020 presidential candidate over her statements about the terror leader’s death.
“I believe you respect the American military and respect our troops. You have traveled overseas many times. I just want to say that first and foremost,” McCain began and then added, “You issued a statement calling Soleimani a murderer. Later, you issued a second statement saying that he was ‘an assassination of a senior foreign military official.’ Now, this is a man who is obviously responsible for hundreds of American troops’ deaths, carnage that we can’t even imagine.”
McCain then continued by saying she didn’t “understand” Warren’s “flip-flop” in her statements and why she hadn’t described Soleimani as a “terrorist” despite the fact that the Treasury and State departments called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “terrorist organization.”
“I don’t understand the flip-flop,” the conservative commentator told the Senator. “I don’t understand why it was so hard to call him a terrorist, and I would just like you to explain the change.”
Warren said her answers weren’t a “change,” but the “truth” and expressed that the ultimate problem was Trump’s response to the situation.
“The question is what is the response that the president of the United States should make, and what advances the interests of the United States of America?” she asked. “Think about Saddam Hussein. You want to talk a bad guy, right? However, going to war in Iraq was not in the interest of the United States.”
While Warren was continuing to explain her views, McCain cut off the senator and asked: “Do you think he’s terrorist?”
“He’s part of a group that has been designated –” Warren replied, before McCain cut her off again. “But is he a terrorist?”
“He’s part of a group that’s been –” the senator repeated. McCain shook her head and asked, “He’s not a terrorist?”
“Of course, he is,” Warren conceded. “He’s part of a group that has been designated a terrorist organization. The question though, is what’s the right response? And the response that Donald Trump has picked is the most incendiary and has moved us the right to the edge of war, and that is not in our long-term interests.”
Watch it all go down in the video above.
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