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President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is “wrong” in her assessment that Iran is not close to building a nuclear weapon.
Trump’s comments came after he departed Air Force One en route to his Bedminister, New Jersey, golf club, when he stepped aside to take a few questions from reporters.
“She’s wrong,” Trump said after he was asked about Gabbard’s assessment that Iran is not close to building a nuclear weapon. “My intelligence community is wrong.”
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Following Trump’s comments, Gabbard took to social media and blasted the media for “intentionally” taking her March testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee “out of context.”
“The dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division,” Gabbard said in a post on X, accompanied by a video clip of her March testimony to Congress.
“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”
Trump’s remarks were preceded by a question from a reporter asking the president, who publicly opposed the Iraq war roughly 20 years ago, what made this situation with Iran different – considering no weapons of mass destruction were ever found after the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq.
“There were no weapons of mass destruction. I never thought there were. That was somewhat pre-nuclear. You know, it was – there was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today,” Trump said. “And it looked like I’m right about the material that they’ve gathered already [in Iran]. It’s a tremendous amount of material. And I think within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months, [Iran was] going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let that happen.”
In March, DNI Gabbard said during an opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
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This week, according to The Guardian, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Gabbard’s assessment has been “reconfirmed” by current intelligence.
Meanwhile, last week Gabbard posted a cryptic three and a half minute video on X, warning of the risks of a potential nuclear war, and blasting “warmongers” for bringing the world “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.”
President Donald Trump said aboard Air Force One earlier this week that he doesn’t care what Gabbard says, “I think they were very close to having one,” when pressed on the pair’s divergent opinions.
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