Secretary of State Marco Rubio graciously went to the microphones just off the Senate subway ahead of a late Tuesday afternoon briefing for senators about the U.S. war on Iran and, in a wholly predictable development, was shouted at repeatedly like a drunkard by CNN’s Manu Raju, who tried to further peddle the liberal media-wide lie that Rubio had said Monday the U.S. was dragged into the war by Israel. Despite having yelled repeatedly at Rubio and even after other reporters had been called on, the secretary made Raju seat until the back-end of the media availability. Raju insisted “I want to just clarify what you said” Monday to many of the same reporters about the U.S.’s reasoning for striking Iran, but Rubio interjected to state “[t]here’s nothing to clarify” so long as “you’re going to read the whole statement.” BOOM: @SecRubio was not having any bit of the gotcha games from CNN’s Manu Raju.... Raju: “I want to just clarify what you said. I want to clarify what you said because you said —” Rubio: “There’s nothing to clarify.” Raju: “— you said — no, but you said —” Rubio: “No, but… pic.twitter.com/G39fJupZ7B — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Raju had an agenda to push about a haphazard administration at war with itself, so he kept going: “No, but your quote is about, ‘we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that would precipitate an attack on American forces[.]’” The CNN hack kept sputtering, so Rubio waged his finger and took back control by demanding Raju “let me answer because this is my press conference.” “I was asked a very specific question, so you guys can misrepresent it, but I was asked a very specific question yesterday. The bottom line is this. We — the President, determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple, guys. We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way. If you tell the President of the United States that if we don’t go first, we’re going to have more people killed and more people injured, the President is going to go first,” Rubio explained. Rubio went on, arguing Trump was done negotiating with a regime stalling while “hiding behind these missiles and hiding behind these drones” and Iran could “reach a point where you couldn’t touch them, and then they could do whatever the hell they wanted with their nuclear program and there was no way in the world that this terroristic regime was going to get nuclear weapons.” Rubio did not directly address it, but there was also the intelligence angle that CIA intelligence located the Ayatollah and senior officials, thus cluing in Israel for the kill shot. Raju kept pestering: “So, the U.S. attack had nothing to do with Israel? It had nothing to do with Israel?” Rubio moved onto NewsNation’s Joe Khalil, who bailed Raju out by asking the same thing. In response, the secretary further explained “this weekend presented a unique opportunity to take joint action against this threat, and I’ve just outlined we wanted this to have maximum success” by “destroy[ing] their missiles and their missile launchers,” “their credibility to make” said weapons, and eliminate “their navy.” .@NewsNation’s @JoeKhalilTV: “[T]here’s a general question of why the President gave the green light. And then there’s a question of why did it have to happen this weekend? Are you saying it had to happen this weekend because of that Israeli action?”@SecRubio: “No, this weekend… pic.twitter.com/uQpKpqMddm — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Ever the pest, Raju wanted round two and resulted in Rubio arguing the U.S. acted not because of Israel’s orders, but President Trump “act[ing] on the timing that gave us the highest chance of success” this weekend and in the days to come: CNN’s @MKRaju: “Would the U.S. attack have happened no matter what? Would the U.S. attack have happened no matter what Israel — Israel is planning to do?”@NewsNation’s @JoeKhalilTV: “Speaker [told us] Israel was going to act with or without U.S. —” Rubio: “The President had… pic.twitter.com/0HbZc0GPrJ — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Having heard a reporter invoke the 2001 authorized use of military force to enter Afghanistan, an exasperated Rubio called out the purposefully obtuse press: .@SecRubio: “Listen, let me explain to you guys this in simple English, okay? Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics. They have an ambition to have nuclear weapons. They intend to develop those nuclear weapons behind a program of missiles and drones and terrorism,… pic.twitter.com/48p6bE5TMc — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Since he wasn’t hectoring Rubio like Raju was, Khalil received the last question, which invoked “Democrats criticiz[ing]” Rubio for the justification of going to war. This triggered Rubio to closed with a masterful encapsulation of the way liberal critics operate and would on Tuesday: .@NewsNation’s @JoeKhalilTV: “Yesterday, several — several Democrats criticized what you said and argue that Israel —”@SecRubio: “Yeah, of course, they criticized. The question is several Democrats criticized — they’re going to always criticize. We’ve been doing this for years,… pic.twitter.com/NN5wnAxk75 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Rewinding to the beginning, Rubio opened by encouraging the news media to publish the State Department contact information for Americans stranded in the Middle East and reiterating the U.S. military objectives. Raju then started shouting, but was denied by a female reporter on the other side of the gaggle, who also drew Rubio’s ire based on her statement that “[y]esterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that’s why we needed to get involved” where as “[t]oday, the President said that Iran was going to get [struck].” WATCH: Secretary of State Rubio smacks down reporter for LYING about his statements from yesterday, falsely claiming he said Israel dragged the U.S. into war with Iran.... Reporter: “Yesterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that's why we needed to get… pic.twitter.com/AIKIbsrLBn — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Rubio promptly schooled her and the other reporters, telling her “your statement is false” and reiterating we weren’t being led around by Israel. In reality, he asserted, “the decision [President Trump] made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program” and reporters “need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do” (click “expand”): No. Yeah, your statement is false. So, that’s not what — I was asked very specifically...[S]omebody asked me a question yesterday, did we go in because of Israel?...And I said, no, I told you this had to happen. Anyway, the President made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made. The President systematically made a decision to systematically destroy this terrorist capability that they had, and we carried that out. I was very clear on that answer. This was a question of timing, of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent. Once the President made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations, and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them. That’s what I said yesterday. And you guys need to play it. If you’re going to play these statements, you need to play the whole statement not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do, all right? After a question about another of the left’s favorite narratives that Congress must be allowed prior approval to any military action they don’t like, Raju tried again, but was denied in favor of a more important question concerning the well-being of Americans in the region: Reporter: “Was there a plan in place to evacuate Americans before the attack took place?” Secretary of State Rubio: “Well, that’s the plan we’re trying to carry out. The problem is, or the challenge we are facing is airspace closures. If a country closes their airport — for… pic.twitter.com/T3abDWV2bw — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 It was following this important reiteration of the need for stranded Americans to contact the State Department did Rubio finally allow Raju to try (and fail) to play some sort of journalistic superhero. Somewhere, Jim Acosta must have been proud. To see the relevant transcript from the Rubio media availability on March 3, click here.

One of The View’s usual left-leaning voices made a shocking admission during Tuesday’s episode as ABC co-host Sara Haines admitted that she trusted President Trump made the “right decision for the moment” to strike Iran. As you might have expected, that comment drew a rebuke from co-host Sunny Hostin. Elsewhere in the discussion, co-host Joy Behar claimed the strikes were a distraction from the Epstein files, while conservative guest co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck called out podcaster Megyn Kelly. To preface her support for Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, Haines noted that she didn’t didn’t think it was appropriate to knock Trump for what some would call a “flip-flop” on “no wars,” because many presidents campaign on that only to be briefed and learn how dangerous things really were: It's interesting that people campaign on no war, and what we see across administrations, not in one political party, is when they're in the rooms where the national security things are shared with them, they seem to make similar decisions. Which is less about why did Trump flip-flop and what does he know in those rooms?   Sara Haines is in support of the strikes on Iran and trusts Trump's judgement: "It's interesting that people campaign on no war, and what we see across administrations, not in one political party, is when they're in the rooms where the national security things are shared with… pic.twitter.com/ykd6ebzhLD — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 3, 2026   “So, what I’m saying is: the reason these are aligning these administrations are aligning is they know things we actually don't know in these rooms. And I absolutely trust that this was the right decision for the moment,” she declared. This drew an immediate rebuke from chronically aggrieved co-host Sunny Hostin who played footsie with anti-Semitic tropes to suggest the Jewish state of Israel tricked America into going to war on their behalf: I don't necessarily trust that it's the right decision of the moment, because I think Rubio's war remarks seemed to be going back and forth. I mean, what we're hearing now is, you know, that Israel was going to strike first. And so, a smaller ally, who America funds, who America provides weapons to, was able to lure us into a war.   Hostin suggests Israel tricked America and that America chose war over solving homelessness: "I don't necessarily trust that it's the right decision of the moment, because I think Rubio's war remarks seemed to be going back and forth. I mean, what we're hearing now is, you know,… pic.twitter.com/7YoXzTBpmP — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 3, 2026   She also started shouting about how we could have used the money spent on the Operation Epic Fury to salve homelessness. “This is going to cost $210 billion to American taxpayers. We could eradicate homelessness in the United States for $10 billion,” she shrieked. Since she wasn’t on Monday’s show when they initially discussed the strikes, co-host Joy Behar had to catch up with their hyperbolic hot takes. According to Behar, “there's something fishy about why [Trump] did it” as she suggested it was a “wag the dog situation.” She went on to claim the strikes were all just “a distraction” from the Epstein files. “I think that he feels that he is in trouble. God knows what's in those Epstein files. It must be horrendous,” she proclaimed.   Joy Behar claims the strikes on Iran "smell fishy" to her... She claims it's a distraction and suggests it's a "wag the dog" situation." She suggests it's distraction from prices and the Epstein files and Trump will have no legacy and will be erased: BEHAR: You know, there's… pic.twitter.com/iDvvESamo5 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 3, 2026   After pushing back and touting how successful the strikes had been at decapitating the regime, Hasselbeck wanted to push back some more. She then proceeded to call out podcaster Megyn Kelly for comments she made suggesting the six service members killed in the operation so far didn’t die for America: If I could just say this, number one, Megyn Kelly's clip that we ran before saying who those troops died for. How dare a you, Megan Kelly? How dare you tell a military person who has sacrificed their lives for our nation in our uniform, when they are sacrificing their lives in our uniform. How dare you tell them or their families or our nation what they died for? “Oh, you better be careful. She's going to come right back at you. She's like a roller derby queen,” warned Behar. “I'm not afraid of her. I'm not afraid of her,” Hasselbeck shot back. “My heart with my friends in the military, you do not get to authorize who they died for? So, let me just clear that up.”   "How dare you, Megyn Kelly?" "I'm not afraid of her." Hasselbeck unloads on Megyn Kelly for her comments about why American service members died during operations against Iran: HASSELBECK: If I could just say this, number one, Megyn Kelly's clip that we ran before saying who… pic.twitter.com/AaYiBnmgLB — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 3, 2026   The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s The View March 3, 2026 11:19:33 a.m. Eastern (…) WHOOPI GOLDBERG: There’s a lot of angry people. BEHAR: You know, there's something fishy about why he did it to me. I mean, I don't trust him anyway, and they all lie. But why is he really doing this? First of all, he knows that his administration is in trouble, because people want the prices of food to go down, they want eggs to go down, they want gas to go down, and things are going up because of this. Gas is now at a higher point. The DOW dropped 880 points this morning. Oil prices are up 10 percent. GOLDBERG: Right. BEHAR: So, why is he doing this? Possibly it's a distraction, like a wag the dog situation. HAINES: I don't think this one is. BEHAR: You don't? (…) 11:20:35 a.m. Eastern BEHAR: My friend said he thinks that Netanyahu convinced him - Trump that this would be good for his legacy. What legacy? The minute he is out, every name is coming off every building. No one's ever going to hear from him again. So, I don’t know about that. I think that he feels that he is in trouble. God knows what's in those Epstein files. It must be horrendous. ELISABETH HASSELBECK: No. No. No. No. BEHAR: No? HASSELBECK: No. [Laughter] [Play off music starts] BEHAR: What do you think? HASSELBECK: I’ll tell you when we come back. GOLDBERG: I guess we’re going to talk more about it when we come back. (…) 11:25:49 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: I just want to point out that this week they are set to vote on the war powers resolutions to limit you-know-who's military operations in Iran. Given the strikes have already happened, it's really not going to have much of an impact. HASSELBECK: Well, this has been successful. The strikes have been successful taking out the terrorist regime in Iran, 40 leaders along with the ayatollah. GOLDBERG: Along with the kids at the girl's school. HASSELBECK: There is more to be known about where that military location was placed next to a school and we're still learning about that. They are attacking civilians, we are attacking military locations - SUNNY HOSTIN (interrupting): 175 people most of them children were killed in that strike. HASSELBECK: If I could just say this, number one, Megyn Kelly's clip that we ran before saying who those troops died for. How dare a you, Megan Kelly? How dare you tell a military person who has sacrificed their lives for our nation in our uniform, when they are sacrificing their lives in our uniform. How dare you tell them or their families or our nation what they died for? She should - BEHAR: Oh, you better be careful. She's going to come right back at you. She's like a roller derby queen. HASELBECK: I'm not afraid of her. I'm not afraid of her. But, I am - I have - My heart with my friends in the military, you do not get to authorize who they died for? So, let me just clear that up. BEHAR: Woah. I love it! HASSELBECK: I'm not - And I come here. I may vote Republican and I'm a conservative, but I'm a thinking woman, and I have a heart. With this war or military attack. [Crosstalk] HASSELBECK: Are you glad that the leaders there are gone, that they're not flinging women off buildings and gay people off buildings anymore? SARA HAINES: Well, one thing I’d like to bring up. It's interesting that people campaign on no war, and what we see across administrations, not in one political party, is when they're in the rooms where the national security things are shared with them, they seem to make similar decisions. Which is less about why did Trump flip-flop and what does he know in those rooms? The generals are not political. They go in there and they typically serve for their entire lives. So, what I do trust is when they’re in those rooms. Hillary Clinton came and sat at our table and spoke to us during commercial when President Biden and Vice president Harris were getting crap for how they handled the attack on Israel. And President Clinton said ‘they're doing the right thing.’ She's a Democrat. So, what I’m saying is: the reason these are aligning these administrations are aligning is they know things we actually don't know in these rooms. And I absolutely trust that this was the right decision for the moment. HOSTIN: I don't necessarily trust that it's the right decision of the moment, because I think Rubio's war remarks seemed to be going back and forth. I mean, what we're hearing now is, you know, that Israel was going to strike first. And so, a smaller ally, who America funds, who America provides weapons to, was able to lure us into a war. HAINES: No, they used our intelligence. HOSTIN: They used our intelligence and they also are using our fighters. We’re also sending bombs [Crosstalk] HOSTIN: But let me also say. This is going to cost $210 billion to American taxpayers. We could eradicate homelessness in the United States for $10 billion! And so, when people who voted for Trump are talking about America first that is not America first! GOLDBERG: All right done. We’ll be right back.

MS NOW All In host Chris Hayes made a morally obscene analogy on his Monday show as he lamented that the United States allegedly does not appreciate the fact that the people who die in war are real human beings. To prove his point, Hayes tried to claim that the terror Americans felt after 9/11 is “commonplace” in other parts of the world because of “the kinds of war of aggression that Donald Trump just started.” Hayes started with what may have seemed to be a friendly reminder that this war is taking place in the real world with real people being caught in the middle, “But outside these borders, war is having a bomb dropped on your daughter's elementary school, seeing some alert or getting a panicked call, or on your apartment building, or the hospital where you are receiving care. Death from above. And when you only view war through our perspective, the understanding that bombs are never coming for us, it becomes nothing more than an abstraction. Gets far too easy to wave away the loss of human life. It's priced in. It's the cost of doing business.”   Chris Hayes compares bombing Iran to 9/11, "there was one instance in my lifetime when we in America experienced death from above. September 11th, 2001... For us, that kind of violence is an anomaly. It is a once in a lifetime tragedy. For other people, in other countries, the… pic.twitter.com/Vhmm59sUY4 — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) March 3, 2026   The fact that Israel joined the U.S. in this effort knowing it would face Iranian blowback directly does not appear to have impacted Hayes’s lecture. Instead, Hayes declared, “Remember, there was one instance in my lifetime when we in America experienced death from above. September 11th, 2001. One of the darkest days I've ever been through, that we've all ever been through. The shared trauma from that one day caused a decades-long shift in American culture and foreign policy and American politics. It defined multiple generations.” That is when Hayes made his outrageous comparison, “For us, that kind of violence is an anomaly. It is a once in a lifetime tragedy. For other people, in other countries, the terror is commonplace because, in part, of the kinds of war of aggression that Donald Trump just started.” Hayes’s initial remarks had the potential to be interesting. A segment about how people should view war as an undesirable but necessary business and not as an opportunity to beat their chests could have been an interesting discussion, but Hayes chose to attack the “cost of doing business” idea altogether. Taken to its logical conclusion that leads to a morally depraved pacifism that sees no difference between right and wrong. What made 9/11 so evil was that it deliberately targeted civilians and that there was no legitimate justification for it—as opposed to Iran’s history of terrorism, nuclear program, and crossing of Trump’s red line about mass murdering its own people. If Hayes still doesn’t think attacking Iran is worth it, then that’s fine, but he should leave 9/11 out of it. Here is a transcript for the March 2 show: MS NOW All In With Chris Hayes 3/2/2026 8:09 PM ET CHRIS HAYES: But outside these borders, war is having a bomb dropped on your daughter's elementary school, seeing some alert or getting a panicked call, or on your apartment building, or the hospital where you are receiving care. Death from above. And when you only view war through our perspective, the understanding that bombs are never coming for us, it becomes nothing more than an abstraction. Gets far too easy to wave away the loss of human life. It's priced in. It's the cost of doing business. Remember, there was one instance in my lifetime when we in America experienced death from above. September 11th, 2001. One of the darkest days I've ever been through, that we've all ever been through. The shared trauma from that one day caused a decades-long shift in American culture and foreign policy and American politics. It defined multiple generations.  For us, that kind of violence is an anomaly. It is a once in a lifetime tragedy. For other people, in other countries, the terror is commonplace because, in part, of the kinds of war of aggression that Donald Trump just started.

Joe Scarborough has apparently added neurology to his résumé. On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, during a discussion of Bill Clinton’s congressional testimony, Scarborough declared that Bill Clinton was “obviously suffering through Parkinson’s.” Not “appears to.” Not “might be.” “Obviously.” Scarborough went further, criticizing lawmakers for “making a guy who’s almost 80 with Parkinson’s disease sit there for how many hours.” Clinton, however, has never been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The former president has previously addressed speculation about his hand tremor, saying he underwent testing for Parkinson’s and was relieved when the results were negative. Physicians have attributed the tremor to normal aging rather than a degenerative neurological disorder. Later in the segment, Scarborough acknowledged: “I said he had Parkinson’s disease. There is — there’s been some question about that through the years.” That was the entirety of Scarborough's clarification. Scarborough did not retract the claim.  Joe Scarborough: "Bill Clinton OBVIOUSLY has Parkinson's." Walks it back weakly: "Been some question" about that. pic.twitter.com/SFp7KSM3P4 — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) March 3, 2026 Scarborough’s confident on-air medical pronouncements recall his 2024 insistence that President Biden was “the best Biden ever — and f-you if you don’t believe it.” Three months later came Biden’s disastrous “we finally beat Medicare” debate performance. The following morning on Morning Joe, Scarborough suggested it was time for Democrats to tell Biden it was over, and urged the president to drop out of the race. Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 3/3/26 6:02 am ET JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hillary Clinton so humiliated them, so owned them, that if you go on X, you will even have people that have loathed the Clintons their entire career saying, um, listen, guys, I don't want to be the skunk at the party, but I agree with Hillary. It was it was really that bad.  And then, and then, there was the scene of an aging Bill Clinton, obviously suffering through Parkinson's, being held there for hour after hour after hour. I mean, again, it just, and I just sat there thinking, this guy has not been indicted by a grand jury. You all are doing something to an ex-president that nobody's ever done before, that hasn't been indicted by a grand jury. Donald Trump was.  MIKA BRZEZINSKI: And the president is [inaudible.] SCARBOROUGH: And you're doing this to a president in the party you hate, who hasn't been President of the United States for 25 years. And you're making a guy who's almost 80 with Parkinson's disease sit there for how many hours, Willie? It was it was it was it was it was savage. It really was.  . . .  And, you know, I said he had Parkinson's disease. There is, there's been some question about that through the years.  MIKA BRZEZINSKI: But you just notice a term, you just see the age, and he also having him sit there for hours and hours and he kept repeatedly saying: no, yes.  Okay, the precedent has been set. They sat down, they showed up. So who's next? Because there's a lot of people who are mentioned in the Epstein files who really should be doing the same thing. And Hillary Clinton probably didn't need to be called for this deposition, but she showed up.

Reacting Tuesday to President Trump’s Oval Office comments about the U.S. war against Iran, chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce beclowned herself during an ABC News Special Report with the insistence that Trump’s claim the U.S. alone decided to strike Iran was in contradiction to Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating Monday the U.S. was reacting to Israel’s decision to go first. Bruce, as usual, was hurling partisan, fact-free drivel with this claim when, in reality, Rubio and Trump both said the U.S. alone made up its mind to go to war alongside Israel and protect American interests, based on intelligence from both countries. First, here was what Bruce said: FAKE NEWS: ABC’s @MaryKBruce falsely claims Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters yesterday that Israel dragged the U.S. into the war with Iran and that Trump’s comments Tuesday to reporters contradicted Rubio... “Let’s unpack some of this, Kyra, because the President,… pic.twitter.com/MzVWIip9dV — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 3, 2026 Let’s unpack some of this, Kyra, because the President, first and foremost, is pushing back in that question by our Rachel Scott to this notion that Israel forced the U.S.’s hand here. And in doing so, he is directly contradicting what his own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters yesterday. Marco Rubio said that the U.S. faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran, and then Iran was poised to retaliate against the U.S., so the U.S. decided to strike first. The President is saying that’s actually not the case. He says he might have forced Israel’s hand. He says that Iran was going to strike first, saying, “my opinion” — “it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” which also raises question about whether it was his opinion or whether he actually had evidence of that[.] Of course, she insisted “we continue to see this mixed messaging from the White House about why the U.S. decided to launch this campaign” along with “a pretty stunning comment” from Trump that left open the possibility that future Iranian leadership could, if the worst case scenario were to occur, worse than the now-incinerated mullahs. Here’s the reality. Steve Deace Show producer Aaron McIntire snuffed out this disinformation campaign on X before it even truly began. Rubio, in remarks to reporters on the Hill, said in a butchered clip that Trump chose to attack Iran knowing “that there was going to be an Israeli action” and their moves “would precipitate an attack against American forces” and likely “higher casualties” as the U.S. would be on the back foot. “Rubio's comments are being desperately (and probably maliciously) misconstrued. It was our intel that tipped Israel off to the Ayatollah's location. Trump, de facto, gave them the order to attack. So of course we knew Israel was about to strike,” McIntire said. He included a Trump Truth Social post from Saturday afternoon with this sentence highlighted: “[Ayatollah Khamenei] was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that hav been killed along with him, could do.” And, over at National Review on Monday night, editor Philip Klein took aim in a piece titled “No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran.” After highlighting that snippet being shared, Klein placed it in proper context by citing this other portion of Rubio’s remarks: That’s the question of why now, but this operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it, because they could hold the whole world hostage. Look at the damage they’re doing now. And this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen. Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen, no matter what. Thus, in Klein’s summation, Iran’s missile arsenal was growing at such a substantial pace that “if [it] grew large enough, [Rubio] said, [Iran] would be able to make it too costly to strike its nuclear program at a later date than it would be now” and, in turn, the U.S. believed an attack “had to happen no matter what.” Klein also echoed McIntire: “Israel and the U.S. have been sharing intelligence closely...It was the CIA that obtained intelligence about when and where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be meeting with top officials...Why on earth would the U.S. share intelligence as to the time and location of Khamenei if the U.S. was not on board with attacking Iran?” And, given the Trump administration’s reaction to Israel’s strike on Qatar ahead of the landmark peace deal, it’s safe to say Trump isn’t beholden to Israel (or anyone, for that matter). Back to Bruce, she wasn’t alone in the negativity as correspondent Matt Rivers scoffed from Beirut, Lebanon that “[t]here’s a lot of confusion about what the President just said in the White House” domestically and abroad as those stranded in the region “are wondering what is going to happen next and how they can get out of here.” “They all remain trapped for the most part at this point because airspace remains closed. And that’s not to mention the continued threats that U.S. bases, military bases, and U.S. embassies are experiencing here as they remain consistent targets of Iranian missiles...[T]his situation is incredibly volatile. It is incredibly chaotic, and no one has any idea where it’s going to go from here,” he added. To see the relevant ABC transcript from March 3, click “expand.” ABC News Special March 3, 2026 12:05 p.m. Eastern KYRA PHILLIPS: [A] lot of news was made here. Mary, a couple of things that stood out to me was his response as to why they attacked Iran and attacked Iran now while, at the same time, the president seems to have no idea who will lead Iran next. The President also saying these strikes will continue until they “finish off” Iran’s military. MARY BRUCE: Yeah. And it is. Let’s unpack some of this, Kyra, because the President, first and foremost, is pushing back in that question by our Rachel Scott to this notion that Israel forced the U.S.’s hand here. And in doing so, he is directly contradicting what his own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters yesterday. Marco Rubio said that the U.S. faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran, and then Iran was poised to retaliate against the U.S., so the U.S. decided to strike first. The President is saying that’s actually not the case. He says he might have forced Israel’s hand. He says that Iran was going to strike first, saying, “my opinion” — “it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” which also raises question about whether it was his opinion or whether he actually had evidence of that, so we continue to see this mixed messaging from the White House about why the U.S. decided to launch this campaign. Now, as for what comes next, in a pretty stunning comment, the President said that — that many of the people who they had considered might be possible future leaders of Iran have now been killed in these attacks, and that he doesn’t necessarily have anyone in mind. He said he would like it to be a moderate, someone who’s popular with the Iranian people, and he did say that — he was asked what the worst case scenario could be, and he said the worst case scenario would be that we do this and then somebody takes over who is as bad as the previous person, and he said that could happen. So, still a lot of questions about why the U.S. decided to act now and where this goes from here, Kyra. PHILLIPS: Indeed. And our Matt Rivers, you are in Beirut, Matt. We are seeing firsthand the security threats now embassies closing, travel out of the region becoming more difficult. What do we know this hour? MATT RIVERS: Well, Kyra, there’s a lot of confusion about what the President just said in the White House. There’s also a lot of confusion from Americans here in this part of the world who are wondering what is going to happen next and how they can get out of here. There are a lot of Americans who live and work in this part of the world. There are people who are here on vacation. They all remain trapped for the most part at this point because airspace remains closed. And that’s not to mention the continued threats that U.S. bases, military bases, and U.S. embassies are experiencing here as they remain consistent targets of Iranian missiles. We know that roughly a half dozen U.S. embassies have now closed. We know a number of non-emergency personnel have been ordered out of the region by the U.S. State Department. The U.S. Embassy, right where I am here in Beirut, Lebanon, has been closed for the foreseeable future due to the ongoing nature of these threats. There are Iranian missiles flying all over the place right now as those targets continue to be struck in Tehran and of course, Israel continuing to attack targets for Hezbollah here in Lebanon, but this situation is incredibly volatile. It is incredibly chaotic, and no one has any idea where it’s going to go from here. PHILLIPS: Yeah, clearly the war is expanding. Mary and Matt, thank you both. Also, we want to take a look at the big board right now. There’s been a lot of fears over this war impacting the markets, and you’re seeing it already, stocks plunging, oil prices surging, so it’s not just security that we’re talking about, but also the economic impact of this war.