Mike Waltz delivered what critics are calling an “embarrassing” and “horrible” answer after a debt-riddled college student asked during a CNN town hall on Friday how President Donald Trump and his taxpayer-funded war on Iran are “in any way” improving his life.

Moderator Dana Bash introduced the young questioner as a politically engaged Democrat named Santiago Porras Ruiz.

“I’m a waiter at a local restaurant in Queens, a full-time college student who sleeps an average of four hours a night and is still thousands in debt,” he asked. “How is a war in a country half the world away funded by the taxes pulled from my check helping me in any way?”

Waltz, who serves as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was ousted last year as national security adviser following his mistake of adding a journalist to a group chat in which Trump officials were discussing sensitive plans about U.S. military strikes in Yemen.

“Yeah it’s, look, it’s a, it’s a valid and it’s a tough question,” he began Friday.

“I know for certain, and if we just look at the things the president has put in place in terms of housing and big corporations that are buying up whole neighborhoods, the tax cuts that he extended with the big, beautiful bill, the energy policies that we’re putting in place to not only make us self-sufficient, but to, you know, lessen these dependencies and lower prices, even lowering prescription drug prices, the president’s absolutely focused on what you’re seeing day in and day out that’s affecting your pocketbook.”

Waltz eventually turned to the war, saying Trump “has to weigh the risks and make the tough decisions,” praising him for “facing some hard truths.”

“We cannot have a world with a genocidal terroristic regime that holds not only your generation, but the next generation hostage with nuclear weapons. And, you know, those are the tough calls that the American people elected him to make.”

Trump ran on a platform against foreign U.S. interventions in the Middle East, only to upend global stability by launching strikes on Iran — after announcing in June that their nuclear facilities had been “obliterated” — causing a significant rift among his base.

Waltz was eviscerated by critics on social media for his meandering answer on Friday.

guy sat up there and said absolutely nothing. I mean absolutely NOTHING

Bro was literally all of us during this garbage answer. pic.twitter.com/RrRlaZj9cB

A kid working doubles in Queens, sleeping four hours, drowning in debt, watching his taxes fund $184 billion in bombs. Nobody in Washington can look him in the eye and answer. Because the answer is, it doesn't help you. It was never supposed to.

What does his answer have to do with the actual question?

I have to say, that is the most impressive word salad I have ever seen from a Republican politician.It still does not justify spending billions of dollars in a war that no one wants while Americans starve and have no healthcare.

It’s always the ones who are barely getting by that have to sacrifice for the “greater good.”

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