Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a supporter of President Donald Trump’s actions against Iran, said he had questions about a $200 billion request from the Department of War to continue those military operations.
“So going forward, it would just sort of perhaps require some maintenance going into the future,” guest host Charlie Hurt said. “I want to ask you about something about this notion of President Trump sending in troops or doing whatever he has to do to take Kharg Island. Is there any concern on your part about trying to negotiate rationally with whoever remains in leadership in Iran? That they are not really rational people, and the idea that you would seize control of Kharg Island wouldn’t necessarily mean that the Strait of Hormuz would open up?”
Johnson replied, “It depends on how many layers you get down in terms of leadership to actually find some rational leaders or have more of the Iranian citizenry, citizenry take over the government. So, it is hard to predict right now. Right now, the current leadership, the ones that were in place before this, they were — you could not negotiate with them. Forty-seven years at war with us, all they had to do was say they we are not going to pursue nuclear weapons, open themselves up to inspections if they had nuclear power by the rod sets, all they had to do, we would have left them alone. They didn’t do that. They are the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, and now the world knows exactly what a menace Iran is and was, and we’ve got to take them out.
Hurt said, “So the Department of War has come to Congress to ask for $200 billion more to pay for this. What do you see happening with that request in Congress?”
Johnson answered, “No doubt about it, the defense of our nation is a top priority of government. I want to scrutinize why they need $200 billion and from my standpoint, when we’ve gone from $4.4 trillion to $7.4 trillion, you have estimates of somewhere between $700 billion to a trillion dollars of fraud per year. We ought to be able to enact some programs to eliminate that fraud to pay for the $200 billion.”
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