ABC host busts Marco Rubio contradicting Trump on Iran: 'Is that the case or is it not?'

ABC News host George Stephanopoulos called out Secretary of State Marco Rubio after he said the U.S. was negotiating with "lunatics" in Iran, even though President Donald Trump had suggested new negotiators were reasonable people.

"You call them lunatics, but the president just had this post where he says we're in discussions with a new and more reasonable regime," Stephanopoulos told Rubio in a Monday interview on Good Morning America. "Let me try to pin you down on that. Who is this new and more reasonable regime?"

"Well, I'm not going to disclose to you who those people are because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran," Rubio insisted. "Look, there's some fractures going on there internally. And at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that's happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great."

"It's unfortunate the people of Iran are incredible people, the people who lead them, these this clerical regime that is the problem and there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world but we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case."

The ABC host pressed: "But the president said they are. Is that the case or is it not?"

"Well, what I mean is, yeah, you know, so you have people that are saying some of the right things privately," Rubio hedged. "Obviously, they're not going to put it out in press releases, and what they say to you or put out there for the world doesn't necessarily reflect what they're saying in our conversations."

"There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge in Iran have not spoken to us in the past," he added. "We're going to test that proposition very strongly because we always prefer to settle things through negotiation and diplomacy. But we also have to be prepared for the fact that that effort might fail."

"If it fails, the war expands?" Stephanopoulos wondered.

"Well, the war is about," Rubio replied before catching himself. "This operation, okay, and that's what this is, it's about very specific objectives."

The secretary of state insisted that the "objective from the beginning" had been to destroy the Iranian air force, navy, missiles, and factories.

"We are on pace and, in fact, ahead of schedule in some of those things," he said. "And we are going to achieve those things in a number of weeks, not in a number of months."