Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) spoke about President Trump's decisions to strike Iran's nuclear facilities during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."
00:00We've seen what a high bar there is to impeachment when one party in Congress, the Republican Party, is willing to work completely in lockstep with the president.
00:13I think the better remedy, frankly, is if Republicans will show any backbone whatsoever, is to pass a War Powers Resolution to prevent any further military action that is not purely defensive.
00:27That is designed to protect service members' lives, American lives, and our interests.
00:32That, to me, ought to be the most immediate step.
00:35Well, the failure to brief Democratic lawmakers, the making this just another partisan exercise by the administration, when it comes to something as serious as the decision to potentially engage in warfare with another nation,
00:52it means that you're not going to have the whole country bought into this, which is a real problem.
00:57If everything goes well, then maybe it works out fine in the sense of not being an issue that tears apart the American people.
01:05But if things don't go well, if Iran retaliates, if we get in an escalating war with Iran, and you don't have the country bought in because the president didn't seek the approval of Congress,
01:19because he didn't make the case of the American people, because he didn't even inform one of the parties in Congress, that's when you have a real problem engaging in warfare on a partisan basis.
01:31A lot of risks here for the country, which, you know, is the reason why you come to Congress in the first place.
01:38It's the reason why our Constitution says Congress has the power to declare war, not the president.
01:44Well, we're reading between the lines now because we haven't been briefed.
02:13It won't be briefed until early this week.
02:16But judging from the evasive answers of the administration, judging from what the DNI said just a couple months ago,
02:23it certainly appears that the intelligence we have was that Iran had enriched uranium to a very high degree,
02:30was only days or maybe a week away from having the kind of material for multiple bombs,
02:35but that we saw no evidence that Iran had made the decision to build a bomb or was actually affirmatively building the mechanism, which takes time.
02:44So in the absence of that, you don't order a strike like this.
02:49You don't take the risk of a future that is beyond our visibility.
02:53So that's, I think, the flaw in this unilateral decision by the president to engage in this kind of warfare.
03:04I don't know what Israeli intelligence shows, and I don't know what sources they have and how reliable they are,
03:12but it doesn't appear that this was even the basis for that decision.
