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In a recent exchange with journalists, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed critiques from President Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters regarding his military actions in Iran.
“X isn’t the real world,” Leavitt remarked. “This President operates in reality.”
Speaking to reporters on the White House driveway on Friday, Leavitt was questioned about the ongoing discord within the Republican Party.
She emphasized, “President Trump stands as the leader and originator of the MAGA movement. Prioritizing ‘America First’ means eliminating terrorists who have harmed our service members, chant hostile slogans against the U.S., and threaten our nation.”
Opposition to the Iran conflict has been prominently voiced by former Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
Leavitt also noted that Trump ‘is a leader in the peace through strength foreign policy doctrine.’
‘He attempted peace through diplomacy exhaustively and extensively with the rogue Iranian regime,’ Leavitt pointed out. ‘And so they have been struck with the strength and the sheer might and will of the United States Armed forces.’
Trump ordered Operation Epic Fury on Saturday after nuclear negotiations broke down between the US and Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stopped in the White House driveway to gaggle with reporters Friday afternoon
President Donald Trump, pictured in the East Room Thursday, has been attacked by former Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson over starting a war with Iran
Conducting joint strikes with Israel, Iran’s longtime ruler, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in some of the first strikes on Saturday.
The President has boasted that US strikes have taken out droves of Iranian leaders in the nearly week-long military intervention.
Six servicemembers were killed in Kuwait Sunday by an Iranian drone.
And the fighting has spilled out into a number of Middle Eastern countries, with Iran targeting places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates – popular American tourist destinations – and the US embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh.
Leavitt pushed that the strikes thus far show that Trump is a ‘man of his word.
‘If you go back and look, not just over the past year as President, but in his first term and in many years in his private life as well, when he has said that the Iranian regime can never obtain a nuclear bomb, well now he’s finally acting on it,’ she said.
‘And he has the courage to do what so many presidents in the past did not,’ she added, ending the gaggle.
While Trump had previously said he did not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, he also pushed on the campaign trail that he did not support ‘forever wars’ – pointing to Iraq and Afghanistan that were started during Republican President George W. Bush’s tenure.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued that President Donald Trump’s Iran strikes do represent ‘America First’
Medical personnel remove a body after a strike on Tehran’s Enghelab Square. President Donald Trump has been criticized for the Iran strikes after promising no ‘forever wars’
That change in Republican foreign policy marked a major difference between Bush’s neoconservatives and Trump’s MAGA movement, with the President pulling his party more in line with Democrats, who are generally more anti-war.
But Trump has brushed off fears that he could get himself into a Iraq-like quagmire.
When talking to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl by phone Thursday, the veteran newsman asked the President what’s next.
‘Forget about next,’ Trump replied. ‘They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back.’
Trump has already expressed his displeasure that Iranian leaders are looking to anoint Khamenei’s son Mojtaba to be the country’s next leader, calling him a ‘lightweight.’
The President has said he wants a US-friendly leader to be in charge of the country.
The United States had an ally in the country’s last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was outed in the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Pahlavi family was put in power over a democratically elected leader thanks to a CIA and MI6-backed coup.
On Friday Leavitt wouldn’t name names on an Iranian leader Trump might support.
‘I know there are a number of people that our intelligence agencies in the United States government are looking at, but I won’t get any further,’ she said.