00:00Why is it that across the administration you can't say what the imminent threat against the United States was that
00:08required us to launch this?
00:10I completely reject the premise of your question.
00:13You have had the President of the United States, the Secretary of War, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the
00:18Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of State.
00:21And now I am out here today to explain to you exactly what led the President to make the decision
00:26to launch Operation Epic Fury.
00:29And President Trump does not make these decisions in a vacuum.
00:32This decision to launch this operation was based on a cumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to
00:40the United States of America.
00:42And the President's feeling based on fact that Iran does pose an imminent and direct threat to the United States
00:48of America,
00:49based on the fact that they are the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism,
00:53based on the fact that they were rapidly and aggressively building up their ballistic missile program to give themselves immunity
01:04within their country alongside their Navy,
01:06so that inside their country they could continue to create nuclear weapons and nuclear bombs,
01:12which would, of course, pose a risk to Americans in the region and even Americans one day here at home.
01:18And then another point on this is the President found that through these extensive, exhaustive, failed negotiations with Iran that
01:26they were hell-bent on death and destruction.
01:28So, again, the President was not going to be just another President on a very long list who sat back
01:33and stood by and passed the buck of this direct threat to the next administration.
01:38The President had a feeling, again, based on fact that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going
01:44to strike our assets in the region,
01:46and he made a determination to launch Operation Epic Fury based on all of those reasons.
01:50And I would like the media to actually report on all of them, rather than just picking sound bites from
01:56one person in this administration
01:57and saying, oh, they're contradicting the other person.
02:00No. Again, these decisions are not made in a vacuum.
02:02They are made by the President's feeling that Iran was going to strike the United States and our assets in
02:08the region,
02:09and he was not going to sit back and watch that happen.
02:11The determination was made that the President was going to strike first alongside Israel,
02:16and that has obviously been proven to be the right decision and an effective one at that.
02:21That's right.
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