Fox News reporter confronts Trump with his own words on Iran about-face
On Wednesday at a press conference during the G7 summit in France, President Donald Trump’s hypocrisy was laid bare when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy quoted Trump's own previous statement regarding Iran, resulting in an embarrassing exchange. “A wise man once said in January of 2020,” said Doocy, “Iran never won a war but never lost a negotiation.”“Who said that?” asked the president.“Donald Trump,” Doocy revealed. “That's what I thought you were going to say,” said Trump. Doocy continued: “So how do you go back to the United States and convince a skeptical American public that this deal is a win here?”From there, Trump launched into a solid two-minute-long rant that briefly touched on Iran before abruptly shifting to his war with the media.“They lost militarily? Okay,” he began before stammering through a muddled assertion that, even if Iran said, “‘Praise be to Allah, Donald Trump is the greatest president ever. We totally concede. We totally give up. This war is over. We have failed,’ the New York Times and CNN — and a couple of others are not all that dishonest — they'd say Iran had a great victory. Okay? They practically do that.”From there Trump diverged from discussion of Iran to focus on attacking the press, saying, “We need a fair press. That's why they're all doing so badly, because they lost credibility. When I win in a landslide and I had 93 percent bad press — they take good stories about me and make them bad. The media has so little credibility that the people voted for me.”Before turning Trump’s words back at him, Doocy had begun their exchange with questions about the $300 billion payment that is rumored to be part of the peace deal.“Only if they're doing things right,” Trump had responded, repeating the phrase three more times. The president went on to justify the fund by pointing out how much destruction the U.S. had caused in Iran, before shifting tone and saying, “So, uh, they have to behave themselves. If they're not behaving, they get hit again. You know, they'll be hit again because we can do it very easily.”He went on to say how much he appreciates that Russian President Vladimir Putin has remained “totally neutral” in the war, even though his own officials have previously asserted that Russia helped Iran target U.S. forces.Doocy then asked about reports that the U.S. would allow Iran to access its frozen assets. “Well, the unfreezing, it's an easy one to answer,” explained Trump. “We have taken a lot of their money… It's not our money. It's their money. And we froze it at a certain point in time. I guess we're going to have to give it back.”While on the campaign trail in 2015, he frequently claimed that former President Obama had “sent Boeing 757s over there, loaded with cash” to bribe Iran into joining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the “nuclear deal” Trump ended upon entering office. In fact, the Obama administration had allowed Iran to retrieve $1.7 billion in unfrozen assets. The Trump deal provides Iran nearly 200 times that amount.
