Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Signals Frustration With Trump in Tense Exchange With Ex-White House Aide

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, a prominent voice on the MAGA-friendly network, pressed for answers over how Iran was still able to carry out deadly attacks on U.S. forces despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that his administration had “obliterated” the country’s military.

Bartiromo raised the issue Sunday during an interview with former national security adviser Victoria Coates. Her question came two days after an Iranian missile hit a military base in Jordan on Friday, killing two American soldiers. A day later, another U.S. soldier died in Iraq after being struck by shrapnel during the controlled detonation of an Iranian drone that had been shot down. 

The Fox Business anchor noted that U.S. Central Command had promised a major retaliatory response, but said she was struggling to understand how Tehran still had the ability to launch such attacks against Gulf nations and American military installations.

“Because the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s military, and the president continues to reiterate that,” Bartiromo said.

Coates pushed back slightly, saying Iran’s armed forces had been “very seriously degraded.” She argued that Tehran’s pace of attacks had fallen dramatically, from launching around 100 missiles a day to roughly 10.

“There have been a number of days where they haven’t fired off anything, and they haven’t targeted Israel for months now,” Coates said.

She added that while Iran’s military capacity had been reduced, it had not disappeared entirely. “Their capabilities are lessened, but they’re not zero, and that’s the important thing. They are a nuisance,” she said.

US Central Command announced on Sunday night that forces began firing at Iran at 7pm EST, after a soldier was confirmed killed at a base in Northern Iraq. 

CENTCOM vowed to ‘continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz.’

Speaking with reporters on Sunday night, Trump said he feels ‘very badly’ about the American fatalities.

‘But you know, those great patriots were out there fighting [so] that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,’ he said.

‘Iran has been very, very badly damaged,’ the commander-in-chief continued. ‘They’ve lost everything almost militarily… We control the Strait; they don’t control anything.

‘So we’ll see what happens, but we hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honor of the…  three great patriots.’ 

American forces have already devastated Iranian missile depots, drones and air defenses in a barrage of airstrikes over the weekend, as the US military promised ‘swift punishment’ for the deaths of two service members.

Those US strikes concluded at 11.30pm on Saturday and were targeted at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces responsible for the fatal attack on US assets in Jordan on Friday.

But on Sunday, CENTCOM announced that a third service member was then killed during a ‘controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone’ in Northern Iraq during action on Saturday. 

On Monday those killed in the attack in Jordan were identified as Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas.

In addition to the two fatalities, one service member is missing in action, and four others were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals in the attack. 

The troops have since been discharged, CENTCOM said in a statement on Saturday.  The U.S. military has said the total number of deaths in the war with Iran is 17.

Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in US strikes in the past three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge on Friday.

People working on ships, as well as foreign workers and others in Gulf nations, Israel and Lebanon have also perished in the conflict.