During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned UN Ambassador nominee Mike Waltz on his support for former Rep. Liz Cheney's (R-WY) amendment to limit the Afghanistan drawdown during Trump's first term.
00:00Mr. Walts, do you believe President Trump has the constitutional power to determine troop assignments?
00:10Thank you, Senator. In his Article II authority, I do.
00:16In the summer of 2020, there was much discussion and there have been statements by President Trump that he intended to draw down troops in Afghanistan.
00:24You were serving on the Armed Services Committee at that time, and Liz Cheney and Jason Crow put forward an amendment.
00:32And with that amendment, they attempted to circumscribe his power to assign troops.
00:36They specifically added conditions, and you supported that amendment.
00:40So I guess my question is, which is it?
00:41Does President Trump have the power under the Constitution to determine troops?
00:45Or do you think Congress should, as you attempted to do when you voted for Liz Cheney's amendment,
00:50do you think Congress has the right to limit his power to remove troops from a war situation?
00:56I certainly – thank you, Senator.
00:58I certainly supported President Trump's effort to draw down our forces, to keep Bagram Air Base,
01:07to keep a lid on counterterrorism, and certainly keep a powerful presence there.
01:12You voted for the Jason Crow amendment, the Liz Cheney amendment, to place restrictions on his ability to remove troops.
01:20Specifically, the amendment said he couldn't draw him down under 8,500 troops.
01:26Senator, I'll have to go back and look at the specific details of that amendment, or whether that was a broader vote for the NDA.
01:32It was a pretty important amendment because it goes to the heart of the Constitution.
01:35And this is sort of the problem, and one of the things I fear.
01:37The Liz Cheney wing of the party, the neoconservatives, they believe in virtually unlimited Article II authority when going to war, to initiate war.
01:47There seems to be no limits.
01:48The idea that Congress should be involved with declaring war is sort of passe.
01:52It's old-fashioned.
01:54But when it comes to ending a war, you voted with Liz Cheney and the others to say that the president couldn't end the war,
02:00that he had to perform different reports.
02:05Here's what one of the reports said that he had to do before he was allowed to remove troops.
02:10This is the Cheney-Crow amendment.
02:12It required a report from President Trump concerning the status of women's access to voting, education, justice, and economic opportunities.
02:20You know, support for women's rights is great, but it's really not typically given as a reason to go to war or stay at war.
02:26And basically, the amendment you voted for based the decision on whether or not he would have to explain himself as to how well it was going for women in Afghanistan before Congress would consent.
02:39Specifically, the amendment says you wouldn't fund or allow him to move troops with DOD funds.
02:45It was an incredible amendment.
02:47I've never seen anything like this, where Congress actually voted to remove DOD funds to let the president remove troops from a war theater.
02:55Look, I'm a big fan of the limitation of presidential power on initiating war, but once we're at war, I've never really quibbled with the president's power to execute the war, to be the commander-in-chief.
03:05When you were deployed, I can't see Congress coming to Congress and saying, well, how are women's rights over there for Colonel Waltz?
03:11Should he be able to go in there or leave because, well, let's have a congressional report on this?
03:17I mean, I think that's insane, and I just don't understand how you could have voted for this.
03:21I mean, should Congress force President Trump to analyze such vague terms as justice before removing troops from a war zone?
03:28I mean, I don't understand how you could have voted for this amendment.
03:31Senator, I look forward to continuing our discussion that we had.
03:38There's a lot of room in between where we have troops and necessarily if we're at war.
03:44So, for example, we've had troops in Colombia for quite some time.
03:48They're not actively engaged in combat.
03:50They're engaged in a training mission to help that government by, with, and through our presence on the ground.
03:55And so I think one of the things at the time the president was looking to do was—
04:01Congress actually had authorized.
04:02We voted for an authorization of force.
04:04It's one of the times—few times I can think of in recent history I would have actually supported that resolution.
04:09Congress voted to send the troops to Afghanistan to get the people who attacked us on 9-11.
04:14And yet you were willing to, in a war zone where soldiers were at war,
04:18place restrictions on the president's ability to move troops around based on women's access to voting.
04:23There's also another clause in there that said, based on how well the Afghans were dealing with disabilities—look, I have a great deal of people with disabilities.
04:31That's a big issue in our country, but it really isn't an issue of war.
04:35And to hamstring and tie President Trump's hands and say,
04:39oh, well, you can't remove, you know, troops until we discuss how well the Afghan government is dealing with disabilities.
04:46Are they going to be able to deal with disabilities when we go?
04:48I guess it just worries me that you come more from the Liz Cheney wing of the party than the Donald Trump wing of the party.
04:54Senator, I am squarely with the president, have been with him in every single election I participated in and him with me in terms of the limits on hard power.
05:08And I can tell you for certain that people who hate war the most are the people that have to go fight them and die from them.
05:14I have many of them with me, and I never want to attend another funeral.
05:18And I certainly support the president's diplomacy first, as I know you do, approach, as we just saw in the Middle East,
05:25his commercial diplomacy that we're seeing around the world.
05:29And we'll do everything I can, if confirmed, as ambassador to the United Nations, to keep us out of wars and to end conflicts.
