On Wednesday, when confronted with President Donald Trump’s attempt to downplay the lethality of his war with Iran, MAGA-oriented Representative Pat Harrigan (R-NC) was forced to admit that he disagreed with the Commander in Chief after initially dancing around the truth.
Harrigan was cornered by Spectrum News White House correspondent Reuben Jones, who first asked the lawmaker whether Trump was wrong when he claimed that Iran’s military had been destroyed weeks ago.
“They weren’t specific enough,” Harrigan replied. “And at the end of the day you have to parse out, we have destroyed Iran’s ability to produce new ballistic missiles and new drones. Totally destroyed. Their defense industrial base is gone.”
“But the military’s not destroyed,” Jones persisted.
“They have substantial inventories of both of those two things that we have to be very cognizant of,” Harrigan admitted, noting, “The longer this goes, the more American soldiers that we stand to lose, there’s no question about it.”
“But you wouldn’t say that the military is destroyed?” Jones pressed again.
“The military and their capability is degraded, not destroyed,” Harrigan conceded.
Jones then raised the matter of the Trump administration’s request for a Pentagon budget of $88 billion dollars, suggesting that, “Some might say, well, if the administration doesn’t seem to have a clear grasp of what Iran’s military capability is, why would we give them tens of billions of dollars more to spend?”
“There are a couple of reasons,” said Harrigan, claiming that he thinks the administration has been clear about what he says were five initial objectives laid out by the White House at the beginning of the war, but admitting, “I think there has been some unclarity about how far are we along those strategic initiatives to what you would consider mission complete.” He then argued that the Pentagon needs more money for the war to prevent it from making cuts to other programs, which would “put the United States of America at significant strategic risk.”
Jones then shifted the conversation to a new post from Trump, in which he listed the death toll of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea, then noted that the Venezuelan “War” lasted only one day with zero dead, while the Iran “Military Conflict” had gone on for only four months with “18 DEAD.” The reporter then asked Harrigan whether Trump’s post minimized the deaths of American soldiers killed over the weekend.
At that the lawmaker struggled to disagree.
“Yeah, anybody can go just a few miles away from here to Arlington National Cemetery and see that this incredible country that we’ve built has been bought at an incredible price, and we should never diminish or demean that in any way, shape, or form,” Harrigan admitted. “I also don’t think comparisons are a great idea. I think we have to look and say, well, look, we have had sacrifices in this conflict. We don’t want to have more, but for those we have had and those we may have in the future, we’d better earn their sacrifice with the right outcome.”