Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and Meghan McCain went head-to-head on Tuesday’s episode of The View during a heated discussion over President Donald Trump’s targeted killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani — the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Tuesday’s episode marked Warren’s second appearance on the ABC morning talk show as a presidential candidate and came just days after the airstrike, which McCain defended on Monday’s episode.
Asked by @MeghanMcCain if Gen. Soleimani was a terrorist, Sen. @ewarren says, “Of course he is. He’s part of a group that our federal government has designated as a terrorist. The question, though, is what’s the right response?” https://t.co/jhLJCNiPuo pic.twitter.com/Ywg8XEKc68
— The View (@TheView) January 7, 2020
“I believe you respect the American military and respect our troops. You have traveled overseas many times. I just want to say that first and foremost,” McCain began. “You issued a statement calling Soleimani a murderer. Later, you issued a second statement saying that he was ‘an assassination of a senior foreign military official.’”
Videos by PopCulture.com
“Now, this is a man who is obviously responsible for hundreds of American troops’ deaths, carnage that we can’t even imagine,” she continued, acknowledging that U.S. Treasury and State Departments had designated Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. “I don’t understand the flip flop. I don’t understand why it was so hard to call him a terrorist.”
“This isn’t a change,” Warren responded. “The question is what is the response that the president of the United States should make, and what advances the interests of the United States of America?”
Warren went on to state that although former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a “bad guy… going to war in Iraq was not in the interest of the United States.”
When McCain continued to push Warren to answer whether or not she considered Soleimani “a terrorist,” Warren said, “of course.”
“Of course he is, he’s part of a group that our federal government has designated as a terrorist,” she said. “The question, though, is ‘what’s the right response?’ And the response that Donald Trump has picked is the most incendiary and has moved us right to the edge of war, and that is not in our long term interests.”
The Tuesday discussion came just a day after McCain exclaimed on The View that “when a big, bad terrorist gets blown up, I’m happy about it,” and comes amid surmounting concern over the state of U.S.-Iran relations.
The airstrike, ordered by Trump as a defensive measure in response to reported “imminent and sinister attacks,” has raised concerns about potential retaliatory attacks from Iran and has drawn backlash from other political leaders.
