| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| It is and what your philosophy is, and why you're so consistently opposed to the platform, the agenda of your party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I'll leave it at that. | |
| I talked to Thomas about this very frankly because I said he's a friend. | ||
| I want him to come to his senses and work with the team. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I try to work with him every day to do that, as I do everybody here. | |
| So, that's my answer this morning, okay? | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| She was coming back. | ||
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| Joining us now to discuss Congress in the Iran conflict is Andrew Desiderio. | ||
| He is a senior congressional reporter for Punch Bowl News. | ||
| Andrew, welcome back to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We'll start with the military strikes on Iran. | ||
| It was something that Congress has had a reaction to. | ||
| Tell us what they've been saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Democrats are going to put forward a war powers resolution later this week in the Senate. | |
| It ripens officially, which basically is a fancy term for essentially that you can actually start having a vote on it on Friday. | ||
| But Senate Majority Leader John Thune has an incentive to hold that vote earlier than Friday because he's trying to get the budget reconciliation bill through. | ||
| He doesn't want to sort of bog down what is anticipated to be floor time on the reconciliation bill with this war powers resolution. | ||
| We're going to see almost every Democrat support it. | ||
| The question is, how many Republicans are going to support it? | ||
| So far, only Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, he's the only Republican who has signaled some level of support for this effort, which basically says any further action against Iran, the president has to come to Congress to seek an authorization for the use of military force. | ||
| Today, later this afternoon, actually, the Senate is going to get a classified briefing from top administration officials on the intelligence information that led to the strikes over the weekend and sort of what the plan is going forward. | ||
| Obviously, we know about this proposed ceasefire. | ||
| The president was talking about that this morning as well. | ||
| But that this is really the only mechanism for Congress to get involved in this conflict somehow. | ||
| War powers, Congress's war powers have significantly eroded over the years, especially over the last 20 years or so, with presidents of both parties claiming that the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force, the post-9-11 ones, claiming that those can justify all of their military actions in the Middle East. | ||
| Of course, Congress disagrees, yet there hasn't been a critical mass sort of, I would say, Republicans mostly to push back against presidents of both parties on that. | ||
| You said that most, if not all, Democrats are expected to vote for the bill. | ||
| Do they have a unified message when it comes to Iran? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, it's tough because some of them are criticizing the president. | |
| They're saying, you know, number one, he didn't seek authorization from Congress. | ||
| Number two, there doesn't appear to be a plan for going forward. | ||
| And number three, they say that the intelligence shows that there was no sort of imminent threat to the United States that required such a large-scale bombing in Iran like we saw over the weekend. | ||
| Now, we will certainly learn more from the senators today after that classified briefing. | ||
| They will learn a lot more than we will, of course. | ||
| But that is sort of what we're hearing from Democrats across the board. | ||
| I will say there are some diversions in that because some are offering some tacit praise for President Trump for having done this simply because the strikes degraded Iran's nuclear program so heavily. | ||
| There are several Iran hawks within the Democratic Party, including those who oppose the 2013 Iran nuclear deal, who have taken that sort of posture. | ||
| But I would say the overwhelming message from Democrats is the three things I described earlier. | ||
| The first and foremost being that the president did not come to Congress and properly brief Congress or consult with Congress on this. | ||
| On the Republican side, it sounds like the majority are behind him. | ||
| Is that the case even when he's signaled this openness to a possible regime change? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, look, I think first and foremost, Republicans are behind President Trump no matter what on pretty much every subject right now. | |
| That is sort of the baseline that we're dealing with here when it comes to Republicans and President Trump. | ||
| On this issue in particular, you're seeing a lot of the war powers hawks. | ||
| You could call them like Rand Paul, for example. | ||
| Aside from Rand Paul, most of them are pretty quiet right now because they think that the president was right to conduct these strikes. | ||
| They think that they were effective in degrading Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| That that is a key, of course, objective of this entire thing here. | ||
| And you aren't seeing very many Republican senators, if any, really come out against sort of the wisdom of the strikes. | ||
| And of course, now they're cheering on this proposed ceasefire, which overnight there was obviously news about potential violations of that ceasefire. | ||
| The president was very angry at both Israel and Iran this morning, as we saw played earlier. | ||
| And then on his True Social account, he issued what appeared to be a direct plea to Israel to basically have your pilots come home, stop the bombing, essentially, right? | ||
| And then he followed up a few minutes later saying that that was actually the case, that they had not done so. | ||
| So, you know, it's very unusual the extent to which he's getting involved. | ||
| You know, it's not unusual for presidents to be involved like that, of course, but to take it so public like he has, that's what's sort of unusual about it. | ||
| And that's what we're dealing with in this sort of 24-7 news cycle related to it. | ||
| Andrew DeSiderio is a senior congressional reporter with Punch Bowl News. | ||
| He is with us for our discussion on Congress and the Iran conflict. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines, Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Andrew, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. | ||
| That's the War Power Act. | ||
| There seemed to have been some confusion about how leadership was notified about the strikes on Saturday. | ||
| What have you learned? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the big four congressional leaders, that being Senate Majority Leader John Soon, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, they were all given the standard sort of notification required under the law. | |
| The problem is that when it came to Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, I'm told that the notification he got was very perfunctory, lacked any detail. | ||
| He wasn't even told which country that the military operations were about to happen in. | ||
| And so that kind of gives you a sense of how Democrats versus Republicans were treated as it relates to this. | ||
| The White House had said Hakeem Jeffries wasn't immediately reachable, so he wasn't given the notification at the same time as the other congressional leaders were. | ||
| But there are other Democrats in Congress who are obligated to be notified about this. | ||
| For example, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, Democrat from Virginia, as well as Jim Himes, who is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Democrat from Connecticut, of course. | ||
| And what they were saying was basically not only were they not notified in advance, but they weren't briefed or consulted the same way that they have been in the past. | ||
| They are part of this very select group of members of Congress called the Gang of Eight, which receives the highest level classified briefings in line with, almost in line with essentially what the president receives. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Alan in Mississippi, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| I cannot understand now that the deal is now that Trump has made the decision, he made the right decision. | ||
| Everybody knows it was the right decision. | ||
| He's reduce the threat of a nuclear war because Iran would definitely use the bomb if they had it. | ||
| And I can't understand why the Democratic Congress are wasting their time now, now the deed has been done. | ||
| It's absolutely well, it's unbelievable that how blindfolded the Democratic Congress are. | ||
| And I would like to make a comment about the last attack that Trump's not pleased with no. | ||
| is hello Yes, go ahead, Alan. | ||
| I would like to make the comment that he's not pleased with no for the simple reason. | ||
| The Israel Prime Minister will not be satisfied until he's got full control of the Gaza Strip. | ||
| And it's the gem of the Mediterranean. | ||
| It's a beautiful place. | ||
| Alan, we'll get a response from Andrew on the first part of your comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, look, I think that Democrats are in a posture right now where they feel like they have to go hard in opposing Donald Trump in pretty much everything he does. | |
| I think that's sort of across the board right now. | ||
| I will say that there are some Democrats who are privately saying that, hey, maybe we shouldn't be as critical as we've been, given that these strikes appear to have degraded Iran's nuclear capabilities significantly. | ||
| Now, senators will learn more about that later today in this classified briefing. | ||
| You know, they're certainly going to be pressing the president's top intelligence officials on all of that. | ||
| But you do have Democrats who are privately sort of grumbling about how their party has responded to this and how the response from the party's leadership has been overwhelmingly critical, of course. | ||
| And Punchbowl is reporting that several members will be introducing war powers legislation in the coming days regarding further any potential further action, military action in Iran. | ||
| What can you tell us about that? | ||
| What's the major difference in some of these bills? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, right now, the Senate is focusing on Senator Tim Kaine's war powers resolution, which was actually introduced before the strikes. | |
| And that is the one that is sort of the most timely right now. | ||
| The House probably won't be able to vote on a war powers resolution until after it considers a reconciliation bill. | ||
| So we're looking at a timeline of probably a couple weeks here. | ||
| The House one has been introduced by the top Democrats on the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. | ||
| So you really do see Democratic leadership sort of coalescing around this effort. | ||
| And like I said before in the Senate, we'll probably see a vote on Tim Kain's war powers resolution sometime this week. | ||
| I would say probably before Friday. | ||
| Our guest, Andrew DiSederio with Punch Bowl News. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-8478-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-478-8002. | ||
| We'll hear from Beverly, who's here in Washington, D.C., Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Beverly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| I guess this question is likely hypothetical in nature, but it's still one that I find myself just asking so often. | ||
| So with this most recent move with striking Iran, and you know, and this is the hypothetical part, you know, had this been any other president on the left, you know, the right would be up in arms. | ||
| There would be, you know, action taken in Congress. | ||
| And I also heard your guests say that Leader Jeffries was notified much later. | ||
| What repercussions, what options, what resources at this juncture, you know, we're almost seven months in and so much has happened. | ||
| You know, I guess what I'm asking is, is there going to be any consequence? | ||
| Let's say further down the road, this strike goes horribly wrong and we start to lose U.S. lives. | ||
| You know, what are the what-ifs as to consequences, if any? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, the war powers resolution, I think, is the only really real consequence that or consequence-affecting tool that Congress has in its toolkit, because the war powers resolution, what it would do is it would essentially say that any further military action regarding a certain nation or a certain part of the world for any future action, the president would have to come to Congress first to seek authorization. | ||
| So that would be the recourse if we do get into some sort of longer-term entanglement with this particular conflict. | ||
| I think the caller was referring to a certain recourse. | ||
| I think that's really the only way that Congress can have a role in this. | ||
| But of course, it depends on Congress wanting to have a role, right? | ||
| Democrats obviously want to be able to have that role and to be able to exert that authority over President Trump. | ||
| Right now, we're seeing very few Republicans wanting to sort of stick their necks out and join them. | ||
| Also, wanted to ask you about the latest on President Trump's one big beautiful bill. | ||
| It's something that is working its way through Congress. | ||
| It's supposed to have a deadline of July 4th. | ||
| Tell us about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch the rest of this on our free C-SPAN Now video app as we take you now to the U.S. Capitol, where the House is gabbling in. | |
| This is live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| The house will be in order. | ||
| The prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben. | ||
| Would you pray with me? | ||
|
unidentified
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Father of Lights, every good and perfect gift comes from you. |