President Donald Trump criticized Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for the second time this month after she told Congress that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
Trump was asked about his intelligence community’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities Friday, upon his arrival in New Jersey for a fundraiser.
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“My intelligence community is wrong,” Trump told reporters, directly rebutting Gabbard after he asked the reporter to clarify whose assessment he was referencing. “She is wrong.”
Trump first criticized Gabbard on Monday while en route to Washington after his early departure from the Group of Seven summit in Canada.
“I don’t care what she said,” he said on Air Force One when asked about the congressional testimony Gabbard delivered in March. “I think they were very close to having one.”
Trump has reportedly become frustrated with Gabbard, not only because of her report, but because of a video she released last week in which she claimed the “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” putting the world “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”
“Perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to,” she said in the recording. “So, it’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness.”
In his Friday exchange with reporters underneath a wing of Air Force One, Trump also dismissed comparisons to the Bush administration’s false intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
“Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction. I never thought there were, and that was somewhat pre-nuclear. You know, it was, there was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today,” Trump said.
“The material that they’ve gathered already, it’s a tremendous amount of material,” he said of Iran. “And I think within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months, they’re going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let that happen. I was very much opposed to Iraq. I was. I said it loud and clear.”
Trump set a two-week deadline for himself to decide whether to help Israel’s military destroy Iran’s nuclear program and “see whether or not people come to their senses,” acknowledging the danger to U.S. assets positioned abroad should he agree to strikes.
“We’re ready, willing, and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” the president said before adding that he may support a ceasefire “depending on the circumstances.”
“I will say this, it’s very hard to stop,” Trump continued. “Israel is doing well in terms of war, and I think you would say Iran is doing less well.”
Trump’s comments come after Iran’s foreign minister met with his British, French, and German counterparts in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday as part of a diplomatic attempt to convince Tehran to dismantle its nuclear program.
At the airport, Trump dismissed that diplomatic outreach, asserting that “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe” and that “they want to speak to us.”
“Europe is not going to be able to help in this,” he said, before repeating skepticism that Iran wants nuclear enrichment capabilities for civilian purposes. Trump noted that Iran is “sitting on one of the largest oil piles anywhere in the world.”
Trump opened his remarks by announcing he had negotiated a separate peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo that would be signed on either Monday or Tuesday.
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When asked whether he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize if he were to broker a deal in which nuclear inspectors get access to nuclear facilities in both Israel and Iran, Trump joked that he earned one for the Rwanda-Congo deal and an earlier détente between India and Pakistan.
“I should get it for the– I would think the Abraham Accords would be a good one, too,” he said. “They won’t give me a Nobel Peace Prize because they only give it to liberals.”