Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson released a video Tuesday to tease his upcoming interview with GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The brief clip features a tense exchange about possible U.S. involvement in Israel’s war on Iran.
Carlson: How many people live in Iran, by the way?
Cruz: I don’t know the population
Carlson: At all?
Cruz: No, I don’t know the population.
Carlson: You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?
Cruz: How many people live in Iran?
Carlson: 92 million.
Cruz: Okay.
Carlson: How could you not know that?
Cruz: I don’t sit around memorizing population tables.
Carlson: Well, it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government.
Though predictable, Cruz’s ignorance about Iran perfectly encapsulates the GOP’s hysterical approach to conflicts in the Middle East.
Over the weekend, Cruz appeared on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” where he declared, “I don’t think there’s any redeeming the Ayatollah. He is filled with hatred.”
At the same time, President Donald Trump has been stoking the embers of war, bombarding social media with one of his signature unhinged squalls about Iran, threatening potential U.S. involvement. And he continued to play the mad king, dismissing the intelligence assessments of his own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who stated in March that Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon.”
As the United States edges closer toward war, it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence to see that the supposed braintrust backing Trump seems to be equally uninformed about the country he wants to decimate.