Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) slugged it out with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum Monday in a fiery marathon interview that tackled terrorism and the Iran war, among other contentious issues.
After El-Sayed said unequivocally that “terrorism of all sorts is awful and terrible,” MacCallum challenged him on the victims.
“You’ve said in your comments about terrorist attacks that we need to be curious about people who do them, what causes them to do these sorts of things, why these things happen, what happens when individuals who commit these acts are in pain?” MacCallum said. “You call yourself a student of that kind of pain, and you say, ‘Too often we’ve been on the wrong side of our own policies.’ When I hear that, it almost sounds like somehow even though this is a terrible thing, it’s actually our fault?”
“No, it’s not — the victim is never at fault, and terrorism is wrong no matter who perpetrates the terrorism, who it is perpetrated against,” El-Sayed said. “War is a system of violence, when you think being about a war we shouldn’t be fighting, like the war in Iran right now.”
“Probably because Iran created a huge threat to the neighborhood and killed thousands of American citizens,” MacCallum said.
“But the threat had been contained. The big threat. The nuclear threat,” El-Sayed said.
“I don’t know about that, they had been breaking the JCPOA by many estimations,” MacCallum argued, citing The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal.
El-Sayed claimed that the threat was contained by President Barack Obama, and torn up by Donald Trump.
“Ask yourself, does more war make us safer?” El-Sayed asked.
MacCallum attempted to interrupt, but El-Sayed admonished, “I haven’t finished my point, I just want to finish what I was saying.”
“We’re in a situation where we could have chosen peace and instead we chose war, and now you’ve got a situation at the Strait of Hormuz where we can’t move oil and gas —”
MacCallum blurted, “I gotta jump in there, that’s not true! The Wall Street Journal put out a piece the other day that said we’re almost to level of getting oil out of the strait and the region —
“So, why are our gas prices so high?” Sayed challenged.
” — that we were at right before the war started,” she finished. “And I think you are going to start to see them come down. That’s what we’re seeing from economists —”
“That’s not what Michiganders are experiencing at the pump, ” El-Sayed countered.
At one point, MacCallum exclaimed, “I’ll jump in now, I can’t let you filibuster!” before El-Sayed accused MacCallum of being a “fan” of the Iran war.
“I’m interviewing you! I’m not saying I’m a fan of the war, I’m saying there’s an argument to be made that it will make the United States safer,” McCallum said.
“My question is, does more war make more or less threats?” El-Sayed asked.
“How would have responded —” MacCallum began before El-Sayed cut her off and demanded, “Can you answer my question? I just want to understand. Has it made us safer?”
They continued on until MacCallum declared, “War is always controversial.”
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
The post ‘Could You Answer My Question?’ El-Sayed Slugs it Out With Fox News Anchor Over Iran in Fiery Marathon Interview first appeared on Mediaite.