Geraldo on Syria Strikes: ‘It Is a Huge Win for President Trump; It Was Awesome’
RUSH EXCERPT:
HEGSETH: "Geraldo you’ve covered that region for quite some time. You know it well as you said from the podium there’s no material resistance from Syria meaning whether en they did shoot it was after our missiles hit . Assad would not have taken that response without Russia telling him to do so at some level. What does that say to you about Russia’s response to some American strength here?"
GERLADO:" Well first of all I think that it is a huge win for President Trump. I had my doubts because I feared that the retaliatory strike was in cold blood, too much time had passed. I was wrong, this was a dramatic and proportional strike. It was awesome. I’m delighted that the British and the French joined in us this awesome air armada which accomplished exactly what the Pentagon wanted it to and it sent a message to Assad in terms of Russia and I think the response from Putin has been relatively muted. The same thing about China. Even Iran, even Syria itself all seem to have come to the conclusion that Assad had it coming. I don’t know where with ego from here. I don’t know what our strategic goal is in Syria. Is it partition of the country? What is it? Is it the outing of Assad? I hope that we don’t stick around to build a nation here, but in terms of this military strike, I think that it hit exactly what they wanted it to. This Syrian air defense capability was shown to be woefu L in the face of our modern weapons and it really does appear there was no wag the dog vibe from this. Nobody suspects that president Trump did this to detract from or distract I should say from this domestic woes. This was in every regard I wouldn’t necessarily say mission accomplished but I will say that Assad crossed the red line, trump said don’t cross the red line and if you do you’ll be punished I promise you you’ll be hurt and he was punished he was hurt and I applaud the president and our men and women and our armed forces they’ve done a magnificent job, and congresswoman and colonel north are absolutely right."
HUNTSMAN:: "Ollie, not everyone agrees that this was the right way to approach this, you have a number of democratic lawmakers who says there was no plan, there was no strategy, no authorization. You have served this country for so many years. How important is it at a time like this for the nation to come together to support the what the president is trying to do here and when they crossed the red line a dictator and another nation that we act on that.
>> Was that for me?
Abby: Ollie, up to you.
>> Well look, first of all I want to come also back to what I said at the beginning and everybody reinforced that. This was a limited objective and the appropriate amount of force was used on it. The fact that we’ve got two other allies engaged in this one of which 32 years ago wouldn’t let us over France. We didn’t ask France to join us in the attack on Libya. All we want to do is fly the fb 111s from England over France to attack Libya. Look at the world is standing with us on this idea that you cannot use chemical weapons against anybody. Certainly not civilians, and so I look at this, all these questions being asked about can we believe the Russians? Look the Russians lie about everything. How do you know they’re lying? Their lips are moving.
>> [Laughter]
>> The ideas that the Russians are going to tell the truth about anything in this thing is foolishness. And what I’m suggesting to you is what we ought to be focused on is the reaction of the Assad regime and their enablers on the ground in Syria. Forget the rest of it. They can scream all they want but the bottom line is what’s happening inside Syria right now to make sure that this Syrian civil war doesn’t see any further use of those chemical weapons. Griff: Congresswoman mcsally if I can just interject real quick we are hearing from your colleagues many Democrat members saying the president should have sought authorization. What do you say?
>> Well let me just say in this environment a lot of the Democrats are going to resist literally everything the president does and some are auditioning for president themselves, so that’s not helpful. In this case, I believe the president had clear authorities under the Constitution as article to authorities, the war powers act, the aumf. He had all of the authority he needs. As soon as I landed last night when I got back to Tucson I had a phone call from the under secretary of state calling me to give us the information. We are in very close contact with the appropriate committees and the leadership. We will continue to be moving forward, but I think this is just another example of the Democrats resisting everything the president does and the hipocracy of how they treat him versus previous Democrat presidents. Pete: Geraldo Ollie north pointed out how France treated us differently and the same could be said of the uk in 2013 President Obama effectively stood down on the red line in large part because the parliament in the uk said we don’t want any part of Syria and now here they are directly aligneded with us taking this stand on the use of chemical weapons . What does that say about President Trump’s leadership in his approach in the world and specifically to this problem?
>> Well it’s obvious I covered the Libya strikes over 30 years ago and I remember the contorted approach of our bombers was so prolonged that many in the news business new the strike was en route and we voluntarily kept quiet about it until they were carried out because we didn’t want to endanger our air men coming on those f1 11s but we have a situation here where clearly France, Britain and the United States stood together. This was again a proportional dramatically effective attack. Where we go from here I think is a big question. I think it’s irrelevant about the war powers act now and the fact of the matter is that trump said he was going to do something and he did it in a very very effective way. There is a very very big and profound question that I would love our government and the allies to ponder now. Are we going to petition, partition Syria? Will there be a Sunni Syria and a Shiite Syria? What’s the end game here? Will this force the parties to get together to negotiate some post-war Syria because Syria right now is an open wound still bleeding refugees into Europe, still destabilizing the middle East but at least the president has made clear that weapons of mass destruction will not be permitted regardless of any political or military end goal? Right now we say that red line means something Assad, dare you step over it again, we doubled the missiles from last year this time. Next time will be an exponential increase in the response. I really do think despite skepticism from people like me the president has done something that I believe he deserves credit for. Now moving forward these are the issues, these are the big stuff that we’ve got to consider as a country. That’s why it’s so annoying. It is so distracting to see stories of porn stars and play mates and so forth, access Hollywood takes, I mean at what point do the American people rebell against the tabloid crap and focus on what is truly in the national interest? Abby: Ollie, I want to give you the last word we’ve heard from Russia saying this only escalate S the violence worse. Where do you see things going from here and what advice do you have for President Trump moving forward?
>> Well, first of all, Syria is a totally failed statement the ultimate outcome is going to be a completely different map than we’re looking at right now and that’s not going to be our determination. That’s going to be the people on the ground working with others in the region. There are a lot of players in this and most important message that was delivered last night wasn’t just to Assad. It was also delivered to Tehran and Moscow. They are the enablers of this kind of activity. They are the enablers of prolonging this war. The Turks are big players in all of this. The fact that you’ve got egyptions and Jordanians and the uae and Saudi Arabia backing this measure shows that there’s a momentum that’s being created to help fix this problem and stop what’s been taking place inside Syria now for better than six years. This is a horrific war. Its got to end. Pete: Absolutely well, Oliver north, Geraldo Rivera and lt. Colonel Martha mcsally who was a fighter pilot as well in the military appreciate your time.
