'You don't understand how intelligence works': Trump defender's tirade cut off on CNN

Journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon was promptly cut off Saturday during an appearance on CNN after launching a tirade in defense of President Donald Trump, whose administration fired a top general Friday following their assessment of the U.S. strikes on Iran.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse was fired on Friday, with no official cause given from the White House. However, critics point to Kruse’s assessment of the U.S. strike on an Iranian nuclear site as a likely reason for the termination, given that the assessment found that the strike had set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a few months, rather than having been “totally obliterated,” as Trump has claimed.

Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, fiercely defended the decision to fire Kruse, calling the lieutenant general “objectively terrible at his job.”

“This (assessment) was obviously nonsense, the Israeli intelligence told us that we had set it back by years, it was obvious from the footage!” Ungar-Sargon said, appearing on CNN’s “Table for Five.” “The report could only have been this wrong if it was politically motivated!”

Initial Israeli intelligence assessments mirrored Kruse’s own assessments, that the strikes on Iran produced less damage than initially anticipated. However, Israeli intelligence officials believed that the strikes set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities by two years, and not months, like Kruse’s assessment.

Abby Phillip, host of “Table for Five,” immediately fired back at Ungar-Sargon’s assessment of Kruse’s firing.

“That is only the view that you would come to if you don't understand how intelligence gathering works, or you don't care how intelligence gathering works,” Phillip said. “More information is gathered over time, and there are often disagreements between agencies about what they understand to be the facts of the situation.”

Another guest on the panel, comedian and commentator John Fugelsang, also ripped into the Trump administration’s firing of Kruse, calling the decision a “war on facts.”

“This poor general, imagine, he told the truth that no, we did not obliterate their nuclear plan,” Fugelsang said. “We had a working deal with Iran, our Pentagon swore that they were complying by the deal; Trump tore it up, now he's bombing them, claims it was obliterated. I want to know if it wasn't, and you don't think Donald Trump's going to bomb Iran again?”

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