Anti-Trump influencer Adam Mockler took on a MAGA fan and “his a**hole president” Donald Trump over criticism of his performance in a brawl on CNN.

Newsbusters editor Curtis Houck posted a clip of Mockler debating pro-Trump radio host Jason Rantz and wrote, “This MeidasTouch kid needs to be shoved into a locker. The idea he’s some foreign policy savant and geopolitical genius is comical, and Abby Phillip acts like he’s all-knowing and not to be questioned.”

Mockler shot back that “the threat below is the MAGA movement in a nutshell. This 5’5″ maga freak can’t debunk a single point I made on CNN, so he threatens to shove me in a locker to model his a**hole president.”

The clip in question was from Thursday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, during which Mockler and Rantz argued about the news that Iran has retained greater capability than previously thought:

PHILLIP: What incentive do they have to do that if they, after a month of war, have retained half of their capabilities and perhaps more on the drone side?

RANTZ: Well, I mean, keep in mind the reporting suggests when we’re talking about the half, a lot of that is under rubble, that it’s inaccessible. And that matters too because we’re going after the infrastructure. And if you’re not actually capable of reaching any of the weaponry or use some of the infrastructure at all, that obviously degrades the problem and it’s not as much of a threat.

PHILLIP: That’s not right now. Because, I mean, I think part of the issue is that this war isn’t just about what’s happening right now. Presumptively, our desire to degrade Iran is about preventing them from doing things in the future. So, it’s sort of like the nukes and the nuclear material. It’s under rubble now, but if we don’t get it out, it’s still there.

RANTZ: But we know where the rubble is, and I think that’s part of the two to three weeks.

The other piece about this story that I think is actually really important is that the president and Marco Rubio and everybody else, they made the case as to why they needed to go to war. And this actually backs up that story, this idea that they didn’t pose a real threat, that there wasn’t anything sort of imminent. This actually cuts right to that and shows it was in fact imminent, it was a real threat. And this is what they were talking about. And now we’re getting some more of that intel.

The reason why I didn’t come out early on was obvious. You don’t just throw out all of your intel right at the beginning when you’re starting this kind of military war.

MOCKLER: I think this directly contradicts almost everything the administration has said over the past few weeks. It absolutely has. Donald Trump has declared total victory multiple times. He has declared victory, right? Can you say yes or no? Wait, has Donald Trump declared victory? As he said, we won a week ago. OK, your answer —

RANTZ: He’s saying that we’re winning.

MOCKLER: No, he said that we won this war. The reality is every weapon system that was actually a threat to us is still intact. We just proved that.

RANTZ: But that’s not true.

MOCKLER: That is absolutely true. Why are the ballistic missiles still firing? Why is the Strait of Hormuz closed? Why can’t we get a single ship through it? Because all of the weapons that are still a threat are still intact. They still have the enriched uranium. We haven’t removed that. They have the IRGC navy still intact. Just because we destroyed a 55-year-old navy —

RANTZ: Everything you just said is not true.

MOCKLER: Wait, if the IRGC navy is not intact, why is the Strait of Hormuz closed?

RANTZ: You’re conflating two separate things.

MOCKLER: What.

RANTZ: Weakening the infrastructure and their capabilities versus completely eradicating it. They have not — no one has said that they completely eradicated every single missile that’s coming from Iran. That’s obviously — no.

MOCKLER: Did he say, we won?

RANTZ: Of course.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet “Newsletter of Newsletters”
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!