Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), who served in the Air Force in Iran and Afghanistan, criticized President Trump’s politicization of U.S. airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities on CNN.
“Donald Trump wanted this nice movie where he could come in at the end, deliver a blow, tie it up with a bow, have a ceasefire and it’s the end of a blockbuster movie. And unfortunately, he, by his own doing, said it was obliterated. He created these questions,” Kinzinger told CNN host Anderson Cooper. “And so now what you have is Pete Hegseth and everybody around Donald Trump that are trying to create a strawman, and the strawman is ‘you’re going after the military.”
Debate has been brewing in the administration and Congress over whether Iran’s nuclear encirclement capacities were actually destroyed by U.S. bombings on June 21.
A preliminary classified report was leaked stating the bombings did not “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program like the president said, but set back the program for only months, according to reporting from the New York Times.
“Now you have these people that should be very serious, the Secretary of Defense, these people in the intelligence community, instead of giving us kind of clean-cut stuff, they’re actually being mouthpieces now for the president. And honestly, it’s politicizing the military, politicizing the intel community. And it’s just this usually doesn’t have a great ending,” continued Kinzinger.
Following this leaked report, the administration aimed to limit the amount of classified information shared with Congress as Democratic lawmakers demand answers on the actual impact of the strikes.
“Now the problem is since Donald Trump said obliterated, and we just don’t know that yet, he’s created the story,” said Kinzinger.
The House and Senate still received an intelligence briefing on Friday. However, the briefing has not answered questions from dubious democrats who still don’t know whether Iran was an imminent threat to the U.S. and whether the American strikes were successful.
“We’ve got the president saying one thing … and based on the DIA analysis, it’s different,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, “His approach, potentially, could get us in trouble. If we don’t up our diplomacy game, then all bets are off.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been adamantly defending the strikes. He lashed out at Fox journalist Jennifer Griffin for asking whether Iran’s enriched uranium stacks were inside Fordow, one of the nuclear sites the U.S. bombed.
Even though the administration has continuously asserted the strikes were successful, Trump said that he would consider bombing Iran again.
