Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked LindellTV’s Cara Castronuova if her peers are mean to her during Tuesday afternoon’s White House press briefing.

After being called on, Castronuova introduced herself by both her name and her employer, and thanked Rubio for taking her question. As she began to ask it, chuckles could be heard throughout the room, causing Rubio to interrupt and ask, “What happened? Why is everyone giggling? What happened?”

Turning back to Castronuova, he asked, “Are they mean to you?”

“No, they’re not mean to me. I don’t think they are — I hope not,” she replied before getting back to her question, which was: “How does the State Department interpret the president’s recent remarks when he said, quote, ‘the Iranian people need to have guns, and I think they’re getting some guns,’ end quote. What did he mean, and do those comments relate to any ongoing or potential U.S. actions like supplying those weapons?”

“Well, I think it goes back to the question I was asked a moment ago. I think the president thinks it’s heartbreaking that the Iranian people are abused by this regime the way they are,” answered Rubio, who continued:

In the end, I mean, this regime is not-, guys, I know I’ve said this, I think I said this in my hearing before the Senate when I got confirmed: I don’t know of any country in the world where there’s a bigger difference between the people and the people who run the country. Okay? This country is run by radical Shia clerics. And that’s not what Iran and the Iranian people are. Now they may be Shia, but they’re not radicals, and they’re not clerics, and they just want a normal life and a regular life, and in many ways a very cosmopolitan country with an incredible history, incredible history and incredible legacy and the like.

So there’s this huge divide between the people of Iran whom we sympathize with — and who the president sympathizes with, because they’re the ones suffering. Look, the world is a victim of Iran, okay? The world is a victim of Iranian because they are terrorists, because of what they’re doing now in the strait. But the people of Iran are daily victims of the regime, and the president has deep sympathy for what they are going through. And I think he’s just expressing that sympathy and that frustration that they don’t have the ability to do more to get rid of this regime that has crushed this country and isolated it from the world, which is a country that shouldn’t be isolated from the world, because its people are phenomenal.

Watch above via Fox News.

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