Vice President Kamala Harris refused to answer a question from Fox News’ Bret Baier about why the Biden-Harris administration allowed Iran to access billions of dollars, deflecting instead to familiar criticisms of Donald Trump.
Harris sat for a contentious 27-minute interview on Special Report during which the Democratic nominee often evaded questions or tried to shift the focus to her opponent. Her answer on foreign policy was no different. Given Harris’s claim that Iran (and not China) was America’s greatest enemy, Baier asked her, why had she and Biden “relaxed or failed to enforce sanctions on Iran, allowing all of this money to flow into Iran, like billions in oil profits”?
Baier’s premise was solid. As Breitbart News and others reported this week, the U.S. government itself estimates that Iran earned nearly $200 billion from oil revenues after the administration stopped enforcing sanctions on the regime.
Harris’s response: “Let’s go back to Donald Trump.” She noted that Trump had pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, which is true — though it was that deal that had also given Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief (and ransom for jailed Americans. The deal also would have allowed Iran to emerge as a nuclear power after roughly a decade, and — crucially — did not prevent Iran from developing its ballistic missiles, as President Barack Obama had suggested.
Harris then brought up a talking points from the 2020 campaign — namely, that Trump had tried to dismiss injuries to American personnel on a base in Iraq after an Iranian missile attack as “headaches.” What Harris failed to mention was that the Iranian attack took place after Trump eliminated Iranian terror general Qasem Soleimani — an operation she and then-candidate Joe Biden had opposed, predicting (incorrectly) that it would lead to war in the Middle East.
As Baier tried to return to the question, Harris simply talked over him, even bringing up the “suckers and losers” hoax. She never explained why the Biden-Harris administration gave Iran access to money for missiles and terror.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.