MAGA congressman gets more than he bargained for from Jake Tapper: 'Guess I'm confused?'

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pushed Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) to answer his questions, with the longtime journalist pressing the Trump administration's claims over its objectives in the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

As President Donald Trump announced an extended ceasefire as the current deadline was set to end, Flood told Tapper during a live broadcast on Tuesday that congressional leaders had been receiving classified briefings surrounding the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

But Tapper didn't stop his line of questioning — multiple times — saying he wanted Flood to answer direct questions about the Iranian regime, its nuclear capabilities and what the plan was for America's military operations.

"I guess I'm just confusedbecause President Trump has beensaying for weeks that that thathe won the war, the U.S.won the war, and [Pete] Hegseth andothers have said that the Iranian Navy is at the bottom ofthe sea and they don't have thecapability of doing the missileconstruction that they did, theballistic missiles and thenuclear material is underground," Tapper said. "I'm just I'm trying tounderstand what the metric isother than opening the Strait of Hormuz for this to be over for.You say nobody wants to cut andrun. OK. But what still needsto be done?"

Flood had a quick response.

"Making sure that there is nomore nuclear weapons that comesout of Iran," Flood said.

Tapper wasn't satisfied with that.

"But what's the metricfor that? I mean, because itsounds as though they're prettyclose to having achieved that," Tapper said. "If the missiles are destroyedthe way President Trump and Pete Hegseth say they are."

But Flood said that wasn't good enough.

"Nuclear pretty close isn'tachieved — and by the way, a lotof this is handled in aclassified setting with actualmetrics and actual updates," Flood explained.

"Andthat is not something that canbe shared on CNN or any othernetwork right now," he added. "You know, weare into this now. We have amission to rid ourselves of, ofa nuclear prepared Iran. Thepeople of America have checksand balances and that there'sgoing to be a request forsupplemental. There are certainlimitations on how long thepresident can engage in thisway. There's going to have tobe an opportunity for the White Houseto share with Congress wherethey're at. And I know that theguys behind me that are 100% fornot only the cattle industry,but national security and safetyfrom a terrorism sponsor. Wewant it all. We want all of the above. And I think we can haveit, but it doesn't happen on a24-hour news cycle. It happensover time. And it happens whenour military leaders can go tobed at night knowing that wedon't have to worry about adirty bomb or a nuclear bomblanding somewhere in Israel orin the United States."