Who is Donald Trump more likely to listen to about starting World War III – Tim Kaine or Laura Loomer?
Kaine, our junior U.S. senator, spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday night in support of his proposed war powers resolution that would require U.S. participation in offensive hostilities against Iran to be explicitly authorized by Congress through a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.
“There’s no part of the Constitution that’s more important than the Article 1 provision making plain that the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress, yet the news of the day suggests that we are potentially on the verge of a war with Iran,” Kaine said.
Um, yes, he would be correct there.
Trump has allowed himself to be dragged into a potentially world order-changing war with Iran by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been saying for 30 years that the Iranian regime is mere weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, and decided in recent weeks that Iran’s position on the world stage has weakened sufficiently to allow for an all-out attack.
It’s a calculation, certainly, on the part of Netanyahu, and not one that is shared by the U.S. intelligence community.
The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a Trump acolyte, testified to Congress in March that U.S. intelligence did not believe Iran was working to build a nuclear weapon, but when confronted on that by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Air Force One early Tuesday, Trump pushed back.
“I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one,” Trump said.
He’d already apparently doubled down on that point behind the scenes. Politico reported Tuesday that Trump has sidelined Gabbard in the aftermath of her posting a cryptic video last week warning that “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” – and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”
Not that Gabbard is the most reliable source on intelligence, but she’s got to be better than Laura Loomer, the conspiracy-theorist kook who former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson said last night in a CNN news hit is “the one that’s telling him right now to attack.”
Only the best and brightest.
I want to applaud Kaine for trying here, but you know that the spineless Senate Republican Caucus isn’t going to stand up to Trump.
“I happen to believe that the United States engaging in a war against Iran – a third war in the Middle East since 2001 – would be a catastrophic blunder for this country,” Kaine said. “I think there are some in this body who have a different point of view than me on that point, but I think we should all be able to agree in the fundamental constitutional principle that says we shouldn’t be in a war if Congress doesn’t have the guts to debate it and vote on it.
“We should all – having taken an oath to the Constitution – at least support the principle that war is something that should be for Congress to declare,” Kaine said.
He’s not wrong there, but we know what’s going to happen.
Share
Chris Graham
