On Monday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show,” President Donald Trump said he’s “torn” about the Iranian people taking to the streets now, “because they lost 42,000 people in the first two weeks. I don’t really want to see that. They have to have guns. And I think they’re getting some guns. As soon as they have guns, they’ll fight as good as anybody there is.”
Host Hugh Hewitt asked, “Now, last time you were on, you said to the people of Iran, stay the course, help is on the way. But they murdered 40,000 of them. Do you want the people of Iran to come out yet, do you want them to stay inside?”
Trump answered, “Well, look, the problem is that you can’t — if you have five people with a gun and 250,000, the five people with a gun, assuming it’s used fast enough, which they do, the five people, they’re going to win. They have to — they don’t have weapons. They lost 42,000, to be exact, 42,000 people in about a two-week [period], protesters, innocent, unarmed protesters. They killed the wrestler, he’s actually a world-class wrestler. They killed him and his two friends. They hung him from a crane in the square. And so, we’re not dealing with your typical people.”
Later, [relevant remarks begin around 14:10] Trump added that “you can’t have an unarmed population against people with AK-47s and stand there, even if you have 250,000 people. So, you started it off by asking me would I like to see them? And I’m very torn on it, because they lost 42,000 people in the first two weeks. I don’t really want to see that. They have to have guns. And I think they’re getting some guns. As soon as they have guns, they’ll fight as good as anybody there is. But when you have people that are armed, and they have very good weapons on the other side, now, they’ve been depleted, a lot of the people fighting don’t want to fight anymore. They’re not getting paid anymore, from what I’m hearing, because we have obliterated them, like, in the military, we’ve done the same thing to them financially, economically. We don’t think they’re paying their soldiers and their guard anymore. So, they’ve got a lot of problems, but we’ll see what happens. We have all the cards.”
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