On Thursday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about President Trump’s response to Iranian agression and Tim Kaine’s accusation that Trump is lying about Iran. Video and partial transcript below:
Donald Trump has a tendency, as we all know, to react big. The first thing out of his mouth when this bombing took place in Saudi Arabia is, “We’re locked and loaded.” Then he starts to [think], “Wait a minute, ehhh I don’t know.”
He’s not a war guy. He doesn’t want to go to war and who can blame him? Who does? … John Bolton has been talking behind closed doors and saying how dumb Trump is about not standing up to Iran, and if we don’t stand up to them, they just get worse. There’s some wisdom to that. But Trump tries to figure this out, and what’s interesting about Trump, and what gives him such problems, is that he thinks out loud.
He doesn’t go into his room and stroke his chin and consider — as you’ve got the microphone in his face, you’re listening to the guy’s mind work. So here he is talking about why he appointed O’Brien.
REPORTER: [Unintelligible].
TRUMP: No, I actually think it’s a sign of strength. We have the strongest military in the world now, and I think it’s a great sign of strength. It’s very easy to attack, but if you ask Lindsey [Graham], ask him, “How did going into the Middle East, how did that work out? And how did going into Iraq work out?” So we have a disagreement on that and you know, there’s plenty of time to do some dastardly things. It’s very easy to start, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens. I think we have a lot of good capital. If we have to do something, we’ll do it without hesitation.
… You know he’s thinking out loud, which is always kind of unnerving with Trump. He’s always kind of going back and forth and we hear him going back and forth, and again, that’s unnerving. It’s unsettling. But basically what he’s saying, Mike Pompeo, the secretary state behind the scenes, is trying to build a coalition with the U.N. trying to work with our allies to get some help on this. The Israelis are starting to say, you know, Iran is a real threat to us and we may have to go in and Pompeo is telegraphing, saying out loud that we will support the Israelis, they have a right to defend themselves, we’re on their team no matter who wins the election over there; no matter who builds the coalition, we’re going to be with Israel. Trump said we’re with Israel, not with Netanyahu — we support Israel. He’s going to stick with that, obviously.
Big choices. It’s never cut and dry, it’s never black and white, you never know when to go in and when not to. We certainly should not be on the ground at war with Iran, but whether we punish them, whether we start to get a little tough with them, is an open question, especially if we can get allies involved on a strike. Again, there’s absolutely no way we want to be invading Iran — that would be a terrible, stupid thing to do. But still, you know, some targeted airstrikes might not be a bad idea.
But compare all that [with] Democrats. Compare this to Tim Kaine? This guy came within an ounce of being Vice President of the United States of America, all right. Listen to whose fault he thinks it is.
KAINE: They’re going around saying the attack was unprovoked. The U.S. is provoking Iran. We were in a diplomatic deal with them that allowed them to sell their oil. We pulled out of the deal, the U.S. pulled out, and we’ve punished their oil economy and so Iran — again, Iran’s not a good actor. You don’t have to like this, but we are provoking Iran every day with the sanctions and with military action, and they’re responding. We need to stop the provocation and the United States needs to return to trying to be a diplomatic broker.
INTERVIEWER: Are you suggesting that Iran had to do this attack, when you’re saying the attack was somehow provoked, do you somehow victim blame for this?
KAINE: No, what I’m saying is — I have voted for sanctions on Iran in the past and they’re a bad actor. But when the administration says the attack was unprovoked, that’s what LBJ said about the Gulf of Tonkin back in Vietnam, and it was a lie. And the administration is lying to the American public by saying this was an unprovoked attack.
The guy reminds me of Alvin the Chipmunk, except without the testicles. I mean, the guy is really, you know, he uses this opportunity to attack the president, who is certainly the one person who is not to blame here. I don’t know what he’s trying to get across there, that we’re not supposed to put sanctions on Iran? That we’re supposed to follow through with Obama’s plan to give them a path to nuclear weapons? That we’re just supposed to be resigned to that and let that go and not try to bring them into line by force because they’re not going to understand it?
Let’s take a look at the Iranians, for a minute. Let’s take a look at Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Zarif, he was asked — this is a CNN exclusive. He was asked how he would respond to an attack, and just listen. I mean, when you look at this guy — and again remember, Yemen is a proxy war — when you look at this guy, is this the sort of guy that we want to make excuses for?
REPORTER: What would be the consequence of an American or a Saudi military strike on Iran now?
ZARIF: An all-out war.
REPORTER: You make a very serious statement there, sir.
ZARIF: Well, I make a very serious statement about defending our country. I’m making a very serious statement that we don’t want war, we don’t want to engage in a military confrontation. We believe that a military confrontation based on deception is awful. We’ll have a lot of casualties, but we won’t blink to defend our territory.
REPORTER: Put yourself in Saudi Arabia’s shoes. If there was an attack on Iranian sovereign territory, with cruise missiles launched from Saudi Arabia, what would Iran’s response be?
ZARIF: Well, they’re making that up. Why do they want to make that up that it was from Iranian territory? The Yemenis have announced responsibility for that, they have provided information about that. They have answered all the Saudi disinformation campaign about the fact that they launched this attack against Saudi Arabia in self-defense.
I always wonder why these guys don’t just burst into flame. You know, just look at that man with his dead eyes saying, “We will kill everyone and it’s a lie.” And we never do anything but we, yes well we fired off, “Why would they make that up?” That we fired the rockets from our territory, just because we fired the rockets from our territory?
I mean these guys are like almost like some kind of cartoon villain, and Tim Kaine is blaming Donald Trump, who he just hates, using this for political capital. It really is awful …
Trump speaks out loud, and thinks out loud, and it is very unnerving to watch him do it — it creates a lot of uncertainty, and it creates a lot of trouble. He’s actually doing the right thing. You do not want to strike until it’s absolutely necessary. It’s still an open question whether it’s absolutely necessary. Obviously, Iran wants us to hit them and wants to draw us into this fight, so I don’t think that that’s necessarily the right thing to do. If you do finally decide you gotta pull your gun: Pull [it] and kill him, and get out and walk away.
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