CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday night dissected President Donald Trump’s televised address to the nation in which he attempted to present a pause in hostilities between the U.S. and Iran as a victory for himself.
Tensions escalated following the U.S. assassination of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded Tuesday with ballistic missile strikes at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. soldiers, causing no casualties. Critics of a potential conflict feared America was on the brink of all-out war following the exchange.
Hours after Trump suggested to Americans he wouldn’t immediately escalate hostilities further, the “Cuomo Prime Time” host argued there are “three lessons that we must learn to avoid being here again this way.”
“Lesson one, declaring victory because we just got bombed and nobody died, that is proof of no strategy,” he said. The second lesson was Trump “has to own what he does,” and the third was “we have to trust our institutions.”
“But we can’t. Why?” Cuomo asked. “The president’s a serial liar. He spent his presidency bashing the very intel agencies he now says are great and we must trust without proof.”
“We kept warning that these self-serving attacks of his on truth and the institutions would come back to bite him, and now it has,” Cuomo added. “And he’s got a lot of people in Congress and the country not behind what he did, not for good reason, but because they don’t have any reason. But they have good reason not to trust him and why he did it.”
Check out the full clip here: