Things got wild on Fox Business when host Maria Bartiromo threw down with and fought back against far-left Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) over the Trump Administration’s Operation Epic Fury and whether it is a good idea to try to take out and forever end the Iranian nuclear program. Bartiromo hammered Khanna and made him look ridiculous during the fight.
For reference, the feud came on Monday, April 20, and came alongside President Trump’s ongoing online commentary over the state of the war. He has repeatedly argued that America is winning the conflict, but also that Iran has repeatedly broken the terms of the ceasefire and will be bombed into effective oblivion if it doesn’t agree to an acceptable deal.
Rep. Khanna began that part of the conversation by ranting and raving about the ongoing operations against Iran, framing the airstrikes on the Iranian regime and its military apparatus as awful and something in which America should not be engaging. That led to Bartiromo firing back, “Are you saying that you do not think it’s a good idea to defang Iran from having a nuclear weapon?”
Khanna, unwilling to go that far, tried to backpedal a bit, claiming that strikes on the Iranian military and its ability to shut down Hormuz, the one big deterrent it had and reason it so far hasn’t been defanged, aren’t achieving denuclearization. He said, “Absolutely, we should do that; but this is not achieving that.”
Bartiromo was obviously annoyed by what she evidently saw as his wishy-washy opinion on the matter, and fired back by asking what sort of plan he has to denuclearize Iran. “So congressman, how do you expect to do that? What is your plan?” Bartiromo snapped. She added, “What is your plan to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon?”
Entertainingly, that then led to Rep. Khanna going berserk and trying to shout over her. He also insisted, despite all the evidence of how the strikes are degrading Iranian capabilities and programs, that the Iranian regime is closer to having a bomb than ever. Bartiromo fired back, “That’s not true! That’s not true!”
Then, after a bit more shouting over each other, Bartiromo called out what Khanna was really arguing, saying, “Are you suggesting that [Barack] Obama’s leadership on Iran was better?” She added, “Because under President Obama, there were 14 wire transfers to a–, hold on, hold on. There were 14 wire transfers to his Swiss account linked to Hezbollah between 2014 and 2016. That was a total of 1.7 billion dollars, the same 1. 7 billion he told Congress was frozen Iranian assets.”
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She then argued, “Now there was a back channel to Tehran through Valerie Jarrett active for 2012 to 2024. This was after he left office so, you know, he, it was almost like a shadow government. And he also sent pallets of cash in a plane to Iran. Now, why would you send money to Iran knowing that they are building a nuclear weapon and they are the leading sponsor of terrorism?”
Khanna, wildly, insisted that Obama’s leadership was better and more effective, saying, “Barack Obama was a great statesman who left America much safer. I wouldn’t put Donald Trump in the same paragraph. The reality is, when President Obama left, because of the great efforts of people like Valerie Jarrett, we had 97% of the enriched uranium out. The reality is, we didn’t have 13 American service members dead. The reality is, we never had gas go up from $2.30 to $4.00. The reality we did not give China more role in the region.”
He added, “Let me finish, Maria, I let you finish! We didn’t give China more role in the region. We did not give the IRGC a more hardline regime in there. You know why? Because Obama actually did his homework. He actually tried to engage in statesmanship. He had gotten, he got China, Russia, the entire European allies on board with getting Iran on a path to not having a nuclear weapon. All Trump did is listen to Netanyahu. That’s his entire foreign policy. And you know what? I resent the fact that Israel is going to tell the United States what to do. The American president should call the shots in this country.”
Watch them fight here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video