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Jake Sherman @JakeSherman - MORE from senior Trump admin official:
"[Iran] refused at every instance, and consistently have refused to address ballistic missiles. They will not even talk about it. They won't talk about it with us. They won't talk about it with our regional partners. They will not talk about those missiles at all. And for us, that was also an unacceptable situation to be in. So the president, frankly, had no choice. ...
"We cannot continue to live in a world where these people not only possess missiles but the ability to make 100 of them a month in perpetuity, to overwhelm any potential defenses. We are not going to be held hostage by them, and we are not going to let them hit us first, because it would have substantially increased the risk that to our to our troops in the region and to our allies"
Quote
Jake Sherman @JakeSherman
NEWS -- A senior Trump administration official said that U.S. intelligence "had indicators" that the Iranians were going to use their missiles "preemptively, but if not, simultaneous" to any American action on Iran.
The Gang of Eight was briefed on this, as @AndrewDesiderio reported in our special edition this morning.
"The president decided he was not going to sit back and allow American forces in the region to absorb attacks from conventional missiles. We had analysis that basically told us, if we sat back and waited to get hit first, the amount of casualties and damage would be substantially higher than if we acted in a preemptive, defensive way to prevent those launches from occurring."
https://x.com/JakeSherman/status/2027838452687909145

Jake Sherman @JakeSherman - ALSO: Senior Trump official: "it was very, very clear to us that they were in the in the throes of rebuilding all that had been destroyed in the operation midnight hammer attack"
https://x.com/JakeSherman/status/2027838784805413046

Jason Cohen @JasonJournoDC - Video: NEW: RFK Jr. tells Joe Rogan what *SURPRISED* him since joining Trump Admi
"I had not spent a lot of my life hanging out with Republicans — and what I imagined that they were talking about is exactly the OPPOSITE."
"I always imagined that Republicans would get together and they’d be thinking about 'How do we screw the poor?' and 'How do we reduce the tax on the rich?'"