Iran

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Mr. President, on Iran and the NDAA, when all the Trump administration can say about his disastrous war with Iran is that Vietnam was worse--a point Trump made yesterday--he reveals the scale of his failure. This is what Donald Trump said. The only thing he can say is that Vietnam was worse.

Oh my God, a war that killed close to 50,000 Americans, a war that lasted almost a decade, a war that ripped America apart in ways that took decades to recover is what he compares Iran to? Oh my God.

Trump's supposed cease-fire deal has completely collapsed. Our troops are coming under attack. The Strait of Hormuz is a minefield, and gas prices are going back up. Donald Trump is totally out of his depth. In fact, Donald Trump is drowning in the Strait of Hormuz because he has no plan. He had no plan when he got America into this war, and he has no plan on how to get us out. Trump started the war without authorization, without a strategy, without an exit.

The reason that we have war powers acts is to force an administration to think through the consequences of going to war ahead of time. Trump, of course, didn't listen. Finally, after weeks, bipartisan majorities in both Chambers of Congress voted to end it. We had tried and tried. Finally, enough Republicans joined us, but Donald Trump ignored them.

Now the White House has formally notified Congress that hostilities have resumed; that American strikes are underway again; and that our forces remain positioned for more. Yet Republicans want the Senate to take up the NDAA--the Defense bill--as though none of this is happening, as though Congress can debate the Nation's central national security bill while ignoring the Nation's most urgent national security crisis. We cannot.

I will be voting no.

The President is waging an unauthorized war in defying bipartisan majorities in Congress and in refusing to level with the American people about the cost, the mission, or the endgame. The NDAA cannot become a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in Iran. Donald Trump does not get to drag the American people deeper into a war he cannot explain and does not know how to end and then demand Congress look the other way.

Donald Trump and the administration have no authorization, no strategy, no peace, no blank check. Therefore, a day after the President told Congress that his war is back on, I am a no--a strong no--on the NDAA.

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