ON MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski, bashed Sen. Ted Cruz over his signing of Tom Cotton's highly controversial Iran letter that seeks to undermine the Obama administration's negotiations with Iran. She asked him if he even knew what was being negotiated between the two countries and of course he said no. She then continued pestering him and finally asked if their interference paves the way for war with Iran.
Brzezinski asked Cruz what he thought of the letter being used by Iranian hardliners to try to squelch the deal. “The fact that the twice now it’s come up and caused problems in the negotiations and hard liners are using it, that was the intention?” she asked. “You wanted that to happen?”
“The idea that hard liners are using it is utter silliness,” Cruz responded. “If we actually had negotiators that were trying to defend our national security, if anything the letter would help them, because what the letter makes clear is for any deal to be binding, it has to go through Congress.”
“I’m still talk about the fact that you are saying to me that what’s happening now in terms of the hardliners using the letter to stall on these negotiations was actually a part of your intention,” Brzezinski said. “It just seems extremely destructive. …I think it’s not inappropriate for Congress to have a say and to have a voice. But to interfere with a negotiation with Iran, and to actually possibly even undermine a deal in the making — basically the next step to that is to just get right down the road to war.”
“The choice is not between war and a bad deal,” Scarborough objected.
“Do you know exactly what the deal is to call it a bad deal?” Brzezinski asked. “Do you have all the information?”
“We don’t,” Crux said. “We have some that the administration has leaked. Oddly enough the administration leaks more details about the deal to the media than they actually inform Congress.” Cruz then defended the precedent for the letter by invoking Ronald Reagan’s efforts in Nicaragua, which was odd.
Cruz' justifications make no sense at all, but since he talks in a measured voice and most TV hosts don't know much about American history, Cruz sounds almost convincing. The senator also stated that most Americans wanted the intervention of Congress on the Iranian talks, but a new CNN poll about the nuclear negotiations shows that 68% of Americans favor the talks.
More than two-thirds of Americans back diplomatic negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, as congressional Republicans continue to call for a role in that outcome, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
