Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy made headlines when he asked President Donald Trump if he was surprised that he was reportedly not briefed ahead of time about Iran retaliating against the Gulf states.
“You were talking about Iran a couple of times today and what they did after Epic Fury began. You said they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked. Are you surprised that nobody briefed you ahead of time that that might be their retaliation?” Doocy asked the president in the Oval Office.
“Nobody — nobody. No, no, no. No, the greatest experts — nobody thought they were going to hit. They were, I wouldn’t say friendly countries. They were, like, neutral. They were — they lived with them for years. Peter, they were going to take over the Middle East. They were going to knock out Israel with their nuclear weapons,” Trump began.
“But after we knocked out their nuclear potential, their nuclear potential weapon, they started building missiles, thousands and thousands of missiles, and they were going to do it with missiles while they developed. These are sick people. While they developed nuclear, somehow they were going to start at a different site because that site was, you saw the site, the mountain, they were going to go into a certain area, which we know exactly where it is, and they were going to do that. And it’s incredible what we’ve done. I tell you, the job we’ve done,” Trump continued.
“You know, if I didn’t terminate Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, you would right now — well, Israel would be gone. It would be incinerated, and probably the Middle East likewise. And remember, they have all of those missiles and I heard they were sending missiles to UAE. I said, that’s strange. You know, UAE is like the banker for Iran. They’re, like, the banker. Qatar, their neighbors, they got along OK. Saudi Arabia — all of a sudden, Kuwait, Kuwait is getting hit. Bahrain is getting hit. All these countries are getting hit. There was no expert that would say that was going to happen,” Trump added.
“It’s not a question of like, gee, should you have known? And if we did know, big deal. I mean, we have to do what we have to do. But we hit them so hard, like nobody’s ever been hit. We hit them very hard. And we’ve extinguished most of their missiles. We’ve extinguished most of their drones. We’ve extinguished most of the places where the missiles and the drones are built. We’ve fully extinguished two layers of leadership, and probably a third, if you believe some stories,” the president argued.
“So, we only have one thing. They have a little choke point and they’ve used it very well for years, but it doesn’t work. But I think this: If some of these countries that we’ve been good to for years, and maybe more important than that, some of these countries that get 90 percent and 95 percent of their energy from Hormuz, the strait, Hormuz, a famous, wonderful, beautiful place, but you wouldn’t want to be necessarily sailing a boat there right now,” Trump declared.
“We’ve taken out their entire navy, we’ve taken out every one of their — they call it a drone layer, a mine layer. There’s specific boats that are meant to put mines on — how would you like to have a nation that has 22 boats where their sole function, they’re very different looking boats. You wouldn’t want one for your family. They’re not pretty. Their sole function is to lift a mine into the water and drop it a certain number of feet down. But they had 22 of them. We’ve taken out all of them. But you can probably — you can probably drop them off on the bus. So we don’t even know. By the way, we don’t know that any mines have even been dropped. But the thought that they would scares people that have billion-dollar ships,” Trump concluded.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised President Trump’s military actions against Iran, describing the administration’s efforts as “a resounding success” following what officials said were threats to U.S. security amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
“Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, the rogue Iranian terrorist regime is being absolutely crushed,” Leavitt said during a news briefing on Wednesday afternoon, adding that more than 2,000 targets have been hit so far. “Iran’s murderous, terrorist leaders are paying for their crimes against America — and they are paying in blood.”
Leavitt also said that Trump is “correcting decades of cowardice” regarding U.S. foreign policy towards Iran, adding that the current commander-in-chief is committed to eliminating the threat once and for all.
“President Trump is finally the man of action. President Trump does not bluff,” she said.
