Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that President Donald Trump was being cavalier and playing to the rafters while “marketing” the results of the U.S. military strikes on Iran.
Slotkin said, “I think the president is not taking his cues from his intelligence community and from his military leaders. He’s obviously playing to the rafters on what he’s saying about the strike, but there’s no way to get around the fact that it was a significant had a significant impact.”
Host Nicolle Wallace said, “What do you make of the White House doubling and tripling down on the word obliterated to describe not just the physical structures that were targeted by the very capable men and women of the military but the Iranian weapons program itself?”
Slotkin said, “Without going into details, there was significant damage done. The word obliterated I can’t speak to that word. I think, honestly, just so everyone understands when the military takes action, there’s an operation, it’s not the military that assesses the battle damage. It’s the Intelligence community that assesses that, and that takes a long time. It takes information from human sources, from all kinds of other sneaky squirrel places where we get information. It takes a minute. And I say that as a former CIA officer. So anyone who says we know exactly what happened, we know exactly the extent of the damage, is just not understanding how our system works and what’s factual. So I don’t think the president is using language based on any intelligence report. He’s using language that are that’s around marketing of these strikes.”
She added, “The administration, I think, is to me, being a little bit cavalier with sort of the response options and the day after planning that really wasn’t done.”
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