Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) pushed back against Democratic lawmakers slamming President Donald Trump’s strikes against Iran, suggesting these criticisms were “nowhere” when former President Barack Obama took similar actions in the Middle East.
Trump and the United States carried out strikes against three nuclear sites in Iran over the weekend, prompting an outcry from lawmakers like Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to criticize both the bombing and the lack of briefing they received on it. On the matter of the strikes, Lawler “fully” backed Trump’s decision, citing how the need for Iran not to have a nuclear weapon is a bipartisan policy.
“To my colleagues who were saying it is unconstitutional, where were they when Barack Obama struck Libya?” Lawler asked on a special Sunday edition of Fox News’s The Faulkner Focus. “Where were they when he struck Syria, or Pakistan, or Yemen? They were nowhere because the hypocrisy of this is just glaring. The fact is the president, through Article 2, as well as through multiple AUMFs, has the authority to make this type of limited strike. If we are to go to war, yes, of course, Congress would have to be involved. But it has been cleared through prior administrations, Republican and Democrat, that the president has the authority to take this action.”
Lawler continued that Iran is willing to “strike indiscriminately” civilian populations for over a year. He also spotlighted how up to 700,000 U.S. citizens can be living in Israel, which is in proximity to Iran, “at a given time.”
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Democrats are not the only ones critical of Trump’s decision, however, as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has deemed Trump’s move as “not Constitutional.” He has since stated that there was “no imminent threat to the United States.”
Following the U.S.’s strikes on Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned the foreign country against closing the Strait of Hormuz, saying this would be “a suicidal move.” The strait, about 100 miles long and 21 miles wide, handles about a quarter of the world’s oil trade, with Rubio warning Iran the “whole world would come against them” if this is closed.