Former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) laid into President Donald Trump's administration on MS NOW as they head into final negotiations for a deal to end the Iran war, faulting them for not understanding the most basic things about the enemy they attacked and then capitulated to.
"I wonder if the military brass and the intelligence community laid it on the line to the President before he made a decision to go," said Kasich, a frequent critic of the administration who endorsed former President Joe Biden. "Were they not aware of the fact that Iran had the capability to be able to manipulate the Strait of Hormuz? Did they not understand even that 70 percent of the missile capability apparently has survived the bombing?"
Kasich added that it's "hard for me" to understand how they didn't assess these fundamental risks before going in.
"I wonder sometimes if the people who advise the president didn't want to tell him what he didn't want to hear," Kasich added, speculating that "they were more interested, perhaps, in keeping their jobs than they were leveling with the president."
The big question now, Kasich said, is how the Trump administration can negotiate a nuclear deal in just 60 days.
By contrast, he reminded the audience, it "took the Obama administration 18 months to be able to figure out where we were going to be. And it was a deal that it was okay, but it had weaknesses. But it took them 18 months to get there. How are you possibly going to do this in 60 days?"
The upshot, Kasich said, is that now "Republicans are running away" from Trump's work on Iran because "they're upset about where we are in the war. And you see senators now speaking out clearly, because there's a point at which the members of the Senate, members of the House, who are Republicans, it's about their survival" and they can't "go home and explain it" to their voters.
"I hope that in these 60 days they can figure something out," he concluded. "But if they don't, going back to bombing, I don't see that as as an option. So we're kind of in a pickle right now."