President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed Congress’ efforts to restrain him from launching new attacks against Iran without their approval and said he wasn’t concerned about the Senate joining the House of Representatives in adopting a resolution invoking the 1973 War Powers Act against him.
In a brief phone interview with The Independent, Trump said he was “not concerned” about the legislation to rein him in following a close House of Representatives vote to do the same a day earlier.
“It’s a meaningless, unpatriotic waste of time, very unpatriotic to do, but that’s okay — It means nothing,” he said.
He then added that “everybody” involved was “grandstanding.”
The president’s brief remarks doubled down on scathing criticism for the House vote — and the four members of his own party who’d aligned with Democrats to advance the legislation directing him to “remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran” under a post-Vietnam War law intended to give Congress more of a say in the president’s use of military force.
Earlier in the day on Thursday, Trump took to Truth Social to savage the “four bad Republicans” — Reps. Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — for joining 211 members of the opposition in support of the legislation authored by Rep. Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
He groused that the House had voted to “limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran” and accused Democrats of being “fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome” while saying they “would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories.”
“The four Republicans, that’s a whole other story,” he said, adding later that quartet in question consisted of “grandstanders” who “should be ashamed of themselves.”
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