‘There'll be no Kristen’: Trump tells NBC host she’ll be ‘blown up’ if war objective fails

President Donald Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday that she would be blown up should his administration fail to achieve its stated war objective.

In an episode of “Meet the Press,” Trump was being pressed on his deeply unpopular war against Iran, which, despite the president having claimed it would be resolved in a matter of weeks, has dragged on for well over three months.

“Remember, you were in Vietnam 19 years because stupid people, you were in so many different countries, every war you were in for years, look at Iraq!” Trump said. “You were there for years!”

Among Trump’s most prominent campaign pledges was to “end the endless wars.” During his acceptance speech in 2024, Trump explicitly said: “I’m not going to start a war.”

And yet, Trump not only authorized the unprecedented attack on Venezuela back in January, but launched Operation Epic Fury in late February, kicking off the largest-scale U.S. military conflict since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The stakes, however, were great, Trump warned Welker, who he said would be blown up should his administration fail to achieve its goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“Listen, Kristen, we're there for a few months and the threat is largely over – soon it will be over – but you cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon or they will blow you up,” Trump said. “There will be no Kristen, there will be no NBC, there will be no 'Meet the Press,' you will end the 'Meet the Press' string.”