MAGA Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary was shut down during a spirited live debate as he tried to defend President Donald Trump’s war in Iran.
The Canadian businessman was attempting to cheerlead for Trump, despite the president’s embarrassing reversal on plans to ensure ships could pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking on CNN’s NewsNight on Wednesday evening, O’Leary “guaranteed” that the vital waterway would soon be reopened and that Iran would be left with “no friends” on the world stage. But Bakari Sellers, who served four terms as a Democrat in the South Carolina House of Representatives, wasn’t buying O’Leary’s unabashed Trump PR.
“Explain to me what’s good right now. Explain to me right now, as we sit here, what’s good for the American public,” he demanded.
As O’Leary pawed around for an answer, spluttering about “doing business in growing jurisdictions,” Sellers delivered a brutal rebuttal.
“You just said a bunch of nothing,” he said. He went on, “Like, explain to me right now, somebody who lives in South Carolina, Nebraska, Ohio, what is good right now for the American public going into a war where you do not understand that they’re going to close the Strait of Hormuz. Explain to somebody watching right now where they’re from.”
O’Leary—who also holds UAE and Irish citizenship—responded: “This war is 78 days old.”
Again, Sellers wasn’t sold. “So you don’t have an answer. Just say, ‘I don’t have an answer,’” he demanded.
“I have a 100 percent answer,” the businessman shot back before Sellers implored him for a more detailed response.
“You make stuff in North Carolina. You make stuff in South Carolina. You have to sell it to somebody. You want to ship it to countries where they can afford it, where they make a lot of money, where the income per capita is very high. I think the Middle East has…” O’Leary said before Sellers chimed in.
“You can’t sell me a bunch of BS. That’s what that was,” he said.
Over a flurry of crosstalk, O’Leary responded: “No BS here.”
O’Leary often uses the airwaves to back Trump, even on the most controversial matters. He went as far as to claim Americans don’t care about the Jeffrey Epstein files as the president faced a torrent of questions over his links to the late sex offender last year.
“Nobody gives a poop about this,” O’Leary insisted on NewsNight last July.
The two men share a sense of camaraderie over their business and TV chops. In January, the president even upstaged a meeting about his Trump Accounts for children to give O’Leary a shout-out. “I like Kevin O’Leary. Where’s Kevin? Over there. Kevin is so nice. He’s with me 90 percent of the time, but when he’s with me, he’s really with me, great,” Trump, yanking his pal on stage.
“You’re an entertainer, businessman…so I know what you do, having done The Apprentice, I see you on television, you have what it takes, right?”
The Montreal businessman even talked up Trump’s proposed U.S.-Canada merger, calling it “very interesting.”
O’Leary previously likened the president to “Godzilla” in a hypothetical trade war with former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whom he compared to “Bambi.”
He also defended Trump when he was accused of bank fraud, saying it was a victimless crime.
Trump, 79, announced on Tuesday in a Truth Social post that he was abruptly halting the Project Freedom mission that he had only just revealed on Sunday.
The president said the “pause” was based on the request of “Pakistan and other countries,” adding that the U.S. naval blockade of Iran would “remain in full force and effect.”
