Shep Smith and Chris Wallace: Trump’s Timeline on Iran Decision ‘Doesn’t Make Sense’

Reacting to President Trump’s assertion that he abruptly called off a military strike on Iran minutes before it was supposed to occur on Thursday night because he’d just learned about the potential human casualties, Fox News anchors Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace said on Friday that Trump’s timeline and explanation don’t “make any sense.”

Speaking to Wallace during Friday’s broadcast of Shepard Smith Reporting, Smith noted that their network’s own reporting showed that Trump was made aware of the high casualty count during a mid-afternoon briefing. According to Fox’s reports, the president had concerns after the briefing and began making calls, eventually canceling the strike in the evening.

“Something is wrong there,” Smith added.

“Yeah, I talked to a former top national security official earlier Republican administration who says this just doesn’t add up,” Wallace replied. “That if when the president meets with his top Pentagon people, they give him a very thorough list, a menu of targets saying you can hit this target, hit that target. If you do, here’s the possible casualties.”

The Fox News Sunday host went on to state that, based on the New York Times’ reporting of the aborted strike that reveals that planes were in the air and ships were in place, it “seems unlikely and certainly not the way it’s been done in the past” that Trump would have just found out from “a General” about the possible loss of 150 lives.

After the two anchors talked about any possible similarities between Trump’s decision and President Obama’s “red line” with Syria and National Security Adviser John Bolton’s well-known hawkishness towards Iran, they circled back to saying Trump’s explanation doesn’t add up.

“Let’s just talk about this sensibly,” Wallace stated. “On the one hand, a lot of us are saying ‘why didn’t you strike?’ But on the other hand, a lot of us, if he had struck, would have said ‘Should he have done that?'”

“I’m not passing judgment on anything he did or didn’t do,” Smith replied. “Only pointing out that the explanation, as you said, doesn’t make sense.”

Wallace agreed with his fellow Fox News veteran.

“It doesn’t hold together,” he declared. “The timeline for when he learned information and when he decided to act, doesn’t make a lot of sense. In a sense, maybe that’s the biggest problem.”

Wallace continued: “You can argue if you don’t want to strike, don’t strike. If you want to strike, do strike. Don’t send mixed messages that not only confuse your enemies but confuse your allies and people in this country.”

“And tweet it out,” Smith concluded.

Watch the clip above, via Fox News.