Rubio Goes Nuclear on Democrat’s Absurd Iran Claim: 'You’re Just Making Stuff Up'

RedState 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio headed to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to face questions about the State Department's budget request for fiscal year 2027 – and the topic of the ongoing conflict with Iran was on everyone's mind. Things got heated when Democrats let loose with their mind-boggling questions about the ongoing negotiations. 

In his opening statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio reiterated that the United States remains "the world's sole global superpower," noting we have the world's largest economy, most formidable military ("ever known to man, by the way"), and a strong currency. This all means nothing, he emphasized, if that might isn't used to protect those who built it into a superpower.

Despite the United States' strong position in the world, Rubio explained that we still over-rely on other countries, namely China, to build products that are critical to the United States' continued success, including ships and pharmaceuticals.

As for Iran, Secretary Rubio noted that its navy had been utterly decimated, but the issues of its nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz remain sticking points in the negotiations.

“They did not, at which point the president decided, and I think appropriately, we can’t have a world in which Iran — only Iranian ships get through the Strait,” Rubio said. “And so, if they’re gonna shut down the Strait for everybody, we’re gonna shut down the Strait for them, and we have done that through a very effective blockade.”

Iran's stubborn refusal to resolve those sticking points, said Rubio, is costing the country "hundreds of millions of dollars that they are losing in lost revenue that they’re not generating as a result of that.” He gleefully set his former Senate colleague, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, straight on the matter.

.@SecRubio shuts down @SenBooker: "No one's 'begging' for anything here. The Iranians might be begging — because their economy is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a day."

"I don't know where you're getting this perception that Iran is stronger. Iran has no navy left. They've lost a substantial percentage of their defense industrial base... and their economy is far worse today—and I mean far worse today—than it was 6-9 months ago."

Another challenge in the ongoing talks, said Rubio, is that Iran's “internal regime is somewhat fractured in the sense of it takes days to get responses from their system."

The fireworks really flew when Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), absurdly accused Rubio of not participating in the negotiations with Iran. And Rubio wasn't having any of it.

While the secretary of state was on Capitol Hill, President Trump took to Truth Social to blast "fake news reports" saying Iran had stopped communicating with the United States. Far from it, he said, the two sides had talked as recently as Tuesday.

The president left Iran with this warning: “It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!”

Senators Thune and Cotton React to Pulte as Acting ODNI

Thune defers to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, who, obviously, wants maximum control returned to the Central Intelligence Agency, and it is a little funny; visibly funny.  Because in the background -much to the angst of the SSCI- people are starting to realize how this dysfunctional Intelligence Community apparatus actually works.

With Marco Rubio as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and John Ratcliffe as Director of the Central Intelligence agency, and Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence, the SSCI has started to lose control over their analyst-centric institutional control mechanisms.

What most Americans don’t yet fully grasp is how ridiculously stupid most of the Intelligence Community actually is.  For two decades, particularly when Team Obama was in charge, the IC qualification that mattered was political ideology.  The IC became a massive network of analysts, who had no functional ability to interpret reality on the ground – regardless of where the intelligence was coming from.

As a consequence, the IC got almost everything wrong as they chased outcomes borne from the brain trust of leadership within the Senate, within the CIA, and within U.S. Dept of State.  Instead of looking at things as they are, the IC always looked at things from the prism of how they wanted it to be. The analysis of the issue flowed from that perspective – regardless of the capability of the Govt institution to create that outcome.

Rubio, Ratcliffe and Gabbard started taking apart that nest of bureaucratic analytical thinking – and focusing on policy that doesn’t come from the Senate.  When you take that approach, the Senate loses control.  SSCI Chairman Tom Cotton is asked about Acting DNI Pulte and hilariously says: “I have no observations on the matter.” WATCH: