Washington Journal Open Forum transitions from Artemis II coverage to President Trump's Las Vegas tax policy update before connecting with Congressman Craig Goldman. Goldman praises General Kaine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, noting the latter's warnings to Iran regarding monitored assets and dismissed media narratives. Asserting U.S. dominance over the Strait of Hormuz, Goldman supports a War Powers Resolution vote while arguing for unrestricted presidential authority to protect lives amid minimal American losses. He further endorses renewing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to balance counterintelligence needs with privacy protections before addressing Energy Secretary Chris Wright's fiscal 2027 budget request. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Protecting American Lives00:06:05
That when the world tries to make the accomplishment something different than what it really is, which is a team accomplishment, you will know, and the things that you say will reflect how you really see it.
It's beautiful.
All right, that is all the time we have for today.
Thank you to the Artemis II crew for your time today and for such an inspiring mission.
And thank you to our media for your continued interest in NASA's Artemis II mission.
We'll see you next time.
Coming up, President Trump is traveling to Las Vegas.
He's expected to talk about tax policy and his initiative to remove taxes from tips and overtime.
Initially set for 7 p.m. Eastern, we're now hearing that the President will take the stage closer to 8.
And we'll take you there live when he starts here on C-SPAN.
We're going to continue with the Washington Journal this morning.
And in this 30 minutes, it's open forum.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, phone numbers are on your screen: 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8000 and 2.
As you're calling in, we're going to take you up to Capitol Hill, where we are joined by Congressman Craig Goldman, Republican from Texas.
Congressman Goldman, good morning to you, sir.
I know you were listening to most of that briefing.
What was your takeaway from the latest out of the Pentagon?
Well, my takeaway is I could listen to General Kaine all day.
What an incredible, impressive leader we have, the right man in the right place at the right time.
He truly is an amazing leader, and great to have him at the helm right now.
At the beginning of that briefing, the Defense Secretary Pete Hegset with two messages speaking directly to two different groups.
One is to the Iranian leadership, to the regime, saying, We're watching you, we know what military assets you're moving, we know where you're moving.
The message directly to them.
Another set of messages directly to the American media saying, I just can't help notice the endless stream of garbage about the war, saying it's incredibly unpatriotic.
Sometimes it's hard to see what side that you're on.
What do you make of those two very different messages to two very different groups of people?
Well, first of all, let's look at where we are exactly.
Let's look where we were a few weeks ago when Iran had an extraordinary amount of missiles, ballistic missiles being shot not only at our ally Israel, but at Americans based overseas as well, and randomly shooting missiles all across the Middle East.
That's completely changed.
They aren't shooting any missiles anymore.
The Strait of Hormuz, which was being controlled by Iran, now is controlled by the United States.
So the conflict has completely evolved, and we are in way more control now than we were before.
Is it over?
No, but I think the light's at the end of the tunnel in that we can see that there is a solution coming sooner rather than later, and that's the good news.
You know that it's not over, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Then what do you make of the war powers debate that's going to happen on the House floor today?
And where are you on a vote on a war powers resolution?
Well, I'm certainly going to vote for it.
And the point is this: the President of the United States has the ability and needs the ability to protect American lives.
And that's exactly what President Trump did by taking out the leaders of Iran at the opportunity he did because they were the ones who were chaining death to America and death to Israel, one of our greatest allies.
And so there's no question that they were continuing to enrich air and uranium, to build nuclear weapons.
And we cannot have an unstable Country like Iran, the leaders in Iran, having that ability to do that.
So we need a strong president, like President Trump has done.
Again, past presidents have talked about, oh, gosh, I wish I could get rid of the leaders in Iran.
I wish I could make sure they don't have nuclear weapons.
And President Trump did it.
So he needs that ability.
When he sees something, we don't have the intelligence that the President of the United States does.
No, you can't share that intelligence with 435 members of Congress.
And so he had that intelligence, and he did the right thing at the right time.
You mentioned you're against limiting the president's war-making ability.
Is there a limit to that, though?
You said there's a light at the end of the tunnel here, but what if this goes beyond the 60-day requirement from the war powers resolution of 1973?
In a conflict like this, I think we need to give the President of the United States the ability to do his job and General Kaine to do his job and Secretary Hexett to do their jobs, and that's to protect American lives.
That's what this conflict has been about from the start, and that's what it's going to continue to be about.
Now, again, it's not at the level that it was.
So we've evolved in just a few weeks.
I mean, we have complete dominance.
They don't have a Navy anymore.
They don't have an Air Force anymore.
We have complete dominance, military dominance.
And we hate at the loss of lives that we've had, but they've been minimal at that.
So just an incredible performance by our men and women of the United States military.
And like I said, way different now than where it was a few weeks ago.
On protecting Americans, can you just explain what's going on today with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as we approach the expiration of the powers for that act, whether it will be renewed?
Well, that's a good question.
I can't tell you at this time whether it will.
There was supposed to be a vote last night.
That vote was pulled.
We hope to have a vote on it today.
I'm certainly for that as well.
Look, there are members that just want to make absolutely certain.
And Director Ratcliffe came and talked to us yesterday, talked to our Republican conference.
Stopping Federal Surveillance00:00:53
There are members that just want to make absolutely certain that Americans are not being spied on by their federal government.
And I totally understand that.
But things changed after 9-11.
You know, there was an attack on our homeland.
And the major point of that piece of legislation that I hope we renew today is to make sure that our intelligence officers and our intelligence agencies have the ability to root out our enemies who are on our homeland.
And certainly we don't want normal average Americans being spied upon or looked at by the federal government.
That's a key point.
Before you have to run, let me come to your Energy and Commerce Committee work.
I know energy issues big in your district in Texas.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright was on Capitol Hill yesterday.
He was talking to the Appropriations Committee, but if you get the chance to talk to him as he's making these rounds for the fiscal 2027 budget request.