Conservative "The View" co-host Meghan McCain peppered presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with questions about Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and why the presidential hopeful refuses to refer to the deceased general as a terrorist.

What are the details?



During an exchange on Monday's broadcast of "The View," McCain confronted Warren over how she described Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who was killed by a drone airstrike last week in Iraq..

"This is a man who is obviously responsible for hundreds of American troops' deaths, carnage, we can't even imagine," McCain told Warren. "The Treasury Department and the State Department have both designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization — I don't understand the flip-flop. I don't understand why it was so hard to call him a terrorist."

Warren simply referred to Soleimani as a murderer rather than a terrorist, and insisted that his death was an assassination.

"This isn't a change," Warren said of calling him a "murderer" and a "senior foreign military official."

She added, "They're truth."

"The question is," Warren continued, "what is the response that the president of the United States should make and what advances the interests of the United States of America."

Warren went on to use Saddam Hussein, the late Iraqi dictator, as an example, still avoiding using the term "terrorist," and instead, calling him a "bad guy."

"Going to war in Iraq was not in the interest of the United States. We lost thousands of American lives. It cost us here at home. It has cost us around the world," she explained.

Warren avoids calling Soleimani a terrorist

Later during the exchange, McCain pressed Warren further on the use of the word "terrorist." Warren described the late general as "part of a group" that was terroristic in nature, and backpedaled, adding that "of course" Soleimani was a terrorist as well.

"Do you think he is a terrorist?" McCain insisted.

Warren responded, "He's part of a group that is but — "

McCain interrupted and demanded an answer.

"But is he a terrorist?" she pressed.

Warren finally responded, "Of course he is, he's part of a group that our federal government has designated as a terrorist. The question, though, is 'What's the right response?' And the response that Donald Trump has picked is the most incendiary and has moved us right to the edge of war, and that is not in our long term interests."