President Donald Trump responded Saturday to critics of his support for Israel’s attack on Iran who claimed to be anti-war: “[Y]ou can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
Trump made the comment in response to questions from Michael Scherer of The Atlantic. Scherer described the president as responding to Tucker Carlson, though Scherer did not provide an exact quote of his question to the president, so it is impossible to know if the president actually responded to Carlson or to critics in general.
Scherer reported:
When I caught Donald Trump by phone this morning, the president wanted to make one thing clear: “America First” means whatever he says it does. “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump told me. “For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”
His remarks were a response to my question about critics, such as Tucker Carlson, who have loudly argued against U.S. support of Israel during its attacks on Iran as an anathema to the “America First” way of doing things. Over the course of our conversation, the president defended his efforts to bring an end to multiple conflicts despite growing violence in the Middle East. He also struck an overall optimistic tone about world affairs. “I think we have done very well,” he said of his administration’s efforts.
The president has said that Iran should come back to the negotiating table following Israel’s successful attacks. Iran had previously resisted ending its uranium enrichment program, its ballistic missile program, or its support for terrorist groups abroad.
Trump has, thus far, resisted direct American involvement in the conflict, though the U.S. is providing Israel with weapons and is said to be considering joining an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow, which is buried deep within a mountain and beyond the known bombing capacity of the IAF.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
