ICYMI—Hagerty Joins National Report on Newsmax to Discuss Iran and the SAVE America Act

Washington-Today, United States Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations, Appropriations, and Banking Committees, joined National Report on Newsmax to discuss the latest in Iran and the SAVE America Act.

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Partial Transcript

Hagerty on Iran: [President Donald Trump] has been completely clear that he is not going to allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon or nuclear capacity, so I am not surprised at all that as we get new intelligence, the president is going to proceed against that. With respect to the broader effort, I think the Iranian regime needs to learn that President Trump will not tolerate the behavior that we have seen with Iran… I think President Trump is demonstrating that very clearly, and he is degrading them significantly. He is creating a new set of terms. The next time the negotiations begin, I think the Iranian regime is going to find a very different situation. If you look at the inflation in their own economy, it's greater than 100%. Their economy is cratering. It is a very difficult situation right now, and President Trump is going to maintain maximum pressure […] Our efforts have been very much focused on depriving the Iranian government of any sort of effort-any sort of capability-to deliver nuclear weapons in that capacity. If you step back and ask yourself, 'why did we enter this at the time that we did?' It is because the Iranians were developing ballistic missile capability and drone capability that would have allowed them to essentially porcupine their country, and that meant they would have had all the time in the world to pursue their nuclear ambitions. President Trump saw this. We have exquisite technology to take out their weaponry, but that technology takes longer to develop-it is a math problem at the end of the day. President Trump saw that and he is crushing their capacity to defend any of these assets. They have no ability to control their airways-we do. It is up to us. The targeting package that [Central Command Commander Admiral Cooper] is pursuing will be discussed and pursued on a strategic basis […] [Iran] is very large-90 million people-the vast majority of them hate this regime. All options are on the table in terms of what we do with the public, in terms of what military targets that we strike, what nuclear targets we strike. I think that's clearly an option that the Iranian people can take a very active role in dealing with this regime. [The Iranian Regime has] proven to be very unreliable… We have been losing American lives to this regime for decades. The time has come for this to come to an end. President Trump has been very clear, and if they strike us yet again, he is going to make certain that the Iranian regime pays for it tenfold-or more. I think that message is coming across and again, whatever effort is necessary to win, I think [President Trump] is going to pursue that and keep those options on the table.

Hagerty on the SAVE America Act: After we saw President Trump reveal the information that we have garnered in terms of Chinese influence in our elections, adversarial influence in our elections, their ability to impact our elections, the need for election integrity and election security has never been higher. The Democrats refuse to acknowledge this because they flooded our border with illegal citizens. They made it clear that they want these people to be able to vote and they don't want any sort of ability to check and make certain that people that are voting in our elections are citizens. It is even more than that, though. We have got to go beyond that and make certain that no one is capable-no country, no individual-is capable of tampering with any vote. And anytime an [illegal alien] votes, they are depriving an American citizen of their vote. So I think the American public is rising, they appreciate this. If you poll this, you have over 70% of Democrats in favor of what we are trying to do, certainly close to 100% of Republicans… And I'm optimistic that this time, [Congress is] going to find a vehicle to get [the SAVE America Act] through.

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