Earlier today, Sen. Mark Warner held his weekly press availability; see below for video, and a few things that I thought were new and/or noteworthy.
- “We are now on day six on President Trump’s war of choice against Iran. Let me say at the outset, obviously I’m going to shed no tears over the deaths of the Iranian leadership. The leadership and the regime has been awful to the 9 million Iranians but also enormously anti-American, anti-Israeli. But it still begs the question of why now and why during this time frame. So far, we’ve seen from the administration four different answers on why this war of choice was started. First, it was supposed to be about the Iranian nuclear capabilities that the president bragged had been completely obliterated last June. Obviously, they weren’t obliterated. Second was about the growing challenge of Iran’s ballistic missiles. And yes, that is a growing concern, but there was no imminent threat to the United States, for that matter, even an imminent immediate threat to Israel. Then there is the concern about the Iranian Navy, which I only heard in the last briefing. And then there’s been the on and off about the regime change. The question I have, the president has asked for the Iranian people to take back their government, but if the Iranian people show up with 100,000 protesters in Tehran, Iran’s capital, and the Iranian Republican Guard, the military, kill 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 of them, does America have obligation to go in and protect those protesters? We don’t have an answer on that.”
- “I’ve also been particularly concerned about so many of our sailors who are in now the conflict zone who are homeported out of Norfolk. I think about the Gerald Ford, our largest carrier that is now approaching month nine of its deployment. Originally was going to go to the Mediterranean, then it was sent to Venezuela. Now it’s back to the Mediterranean. And I heard on Sunday when I was in Virginia Beach and Norfolk and Chesapeake from friends and family members of those sailors who are deeply concerned about when their loved ones are going to get back, how much danger they’re in, you know, what is the purpose of this war. We know the administration has acknowledged that it is going to be weeks and maybe months more. And I still don’t believe there is a clear purpose. It was one of the reasons why I voted yesterday for Tim Kaine’s War Powers resolution. If the president is choosing to take our nation to war, the president ought to come to the American public and the Congress and ask for a declaration of war and make the case. He is he has not done so.”
- “I’d also point out and while our focus should appropriately be on our fellow Virginians who are in harm’s way or the six service members who’ve been killed in the conflict, and with the expectation of more casualties to come – again, the president and the secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s own words – we also need to look at the cost – we don’t have any estimate of the amount of cost of this war. We do know that for example every Tomahawk missile that’s fired cost about $2 million, that it has cost close to a billion dollars to assemble the forces in the region. And again this is a choice. This is an administration that chose not to fund health care for millions of Americans in terms of the tax credits. This administration that’s chosen to cut Medicaid, although most of those cuts won’t take place until after the elections. This administration that’s dramatically cut back on food assistance for needy families…that’s dramatically cut back on research and development. So the question of how large will this bill be and what other domestic programs will have to be cut to pay for these bills is is unknown at this point. Again, I remind people this was the president who was going to get us out of endless wars in the Middle East. And if there’s one thing we should have learned from the last 30 years, it’s a lot easier to get yourself into a war in the Middle East than it is to get yourself out of a war in the Middle East.”
- “We’ve known that the narrowness of the Straits of Hormuz makes it very easy to block, or the Iranians could even sink some of their own vessels there to cut off those straits, which would in many ways the energy supplies not just for America but for countries around the region. We’ve already seen, as you said, gas prices go up… As we get into the spring and summer season, that’s going to really provide a major hit on Americans’ pocketbooks. That combined with the fact that the inflation numbers are coming in higher. This is a president that is not focused on affordability. No matter how many times the White House tries to send him out on this subject, he has no record of affordability. I pray that this war will not last until the fall. I’ve not heard any projection that far in advance, but we’re if we don’t have a clear set of goals, when do we declare victory? Is this going to be simply when the president gets tired of the war or when gas prices get too high? I still continue to worry that we don’t have the level of support from our allies that we normally would. And that has the potential to prolong the conflict as well. So I think Americans are going to see the price at the pump rise dramatically and it’ll get much worse if the straits of Hormuz are closed. And I have not heard of any reasonable plan where you could have escorts of these tankers, particularly through that narrow stretch of sea. I’m open to somebody convincing me, but I’ve not seen anybody rationally propose that kind of a workable situation.”
- [Question about the horrific murder of Stephanie Minter by an illegal alien in Fairfax County] “Of course, if someone has a history of violent crime, they should be arrested and deported if they’re here illegally. But I’ll point out that over 80% of the individuals that have been picked up by ICE in Virginia as they try to hit their daily quotas have had no criminal history or record, other than coming into our country. And many of them even having come in undocumented were going through a process that would bring about legal status. So they’re trying to play by the whether the amnesty rules or other rules who were put forward. I think ICE needs to be reformed. I would welcome, though, the chance to go ahead and fully fund TSA, fully fund the Coast Guard, fully fund the cyber security agency, all the other entities, and still negotiate about reforms with ICE. But I for one have always felt that someone who has got a long-term criminal record, they deserve to be deported. But the overwhelming majority, overwhelming majority don’t fit that category at all.”
- “…when you choose the time and place to start a war, you would think that someone would have thought about, well, we got hundreds of thousands of Americans in the Middle East, we ought to plan in advance to either get them out before the war starts or have plenty of planes available to get them out once the conflict is started. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen so many times with this administration, they’re not great on the details.”
- “I worry about those sailors. I mean, you know, they’ll do their duty…but we’re now, as you said, over 250 days. I hear reports that the toilets aren’t working that well. The stress that’s being put on these sailors and I heard the stress as well when I was in Hampton Roads on Sunday, in Norfolk, in Virginia Beach, in Chesapeake. Every meeting I was at, you know, at least half the people at the meeting had loved ones or new folks who were deployed at this point. So that has a stress on the community, has a stress on the family, and obvious has a stress on the sailors who’ve been deployed.”
- “In terms of killing the religious leader, the supreme leader, this is a guy who had American blood on his hands. I will shed no tears for his demise. But I would point out that as bad as he was, he had put some limits on weaponizing Iran’s nuclear program. We don’t know who’s coming next. The one thing that we did know is that because we didn’t have great visibility into the Iranian resistance that there was a high probability that we might end up with someone that was even worse than the Ayatollah. So we will see as times go on. This is again, why, if you’re going to launch a war of choice, you’ve got to make the case. And since…the president has offended so many of our allies, many of those allies who might have better visibility into the Iranian resistance and a better idea on what’s coming next, and I’m not sure we got all that information.”
- “…there are too many Republicans who are still too afraid of Donald Trump to do their what I believe is constitutional duty. And it’s amazing to me the number of my Republican friends who keep saying, ‘oh, Mark, you’re right, you’re right.’ But then they don’t vote that way. And when I say they aren’t doing their constitutional duty, even if they agree with the president, they ought to exercise Article One powers and ask the president for example in the case of the war to come and make the case. They can vote for the war if they want to, but have him at least make the case. or in the case of tariffs, they’ve all quietly complained, but we were only able on the basis of Tim Kaine’s good work pass one resolution around the Canadian tariffs. We should have passed more. My fear is…when Congress continues to cede power to a chief executive who ignores the law, ignores norms…has a level of just frankly crudeness and threatening to his his supporters and foes alike, it really diminishes America. It diminishes Americans’ trust in their government and institutions, and frankly diminishes our allies’ willingness to help us around the world. Some of the numbers on how America is viewed now are at record lows, and a lot of that is due to Trump’s ‘America only’ policy which often times has turned into ‘America alone’, which does not make America safer. I can promise you that. “
- “Listen, I think the only reason we’re having this referendum is because the president started mid-decade redistricting in Texas and also in North Carolina for purely political reasons. But unlike Texas and North Carolina, where the politicians made all the decisions, in Virginia, the voters are going to decide whether we want to take a temporary…pause…going back to nonpartisan at 2030 when the next census. I think it makes sense to try to balance out some of the other mid-decade redistricting done by the president. But the end of the day, Virginians are going to be able to make that choice, not politicians. “
