See below for the full video of Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability. A lot of what he talked about (e.g., the security of our elections; Tulsi Gabbard’s incompetence and dishonesty; the failure to achieve the Trump administration’s goals in Iran; the complete lack of an “imminent threat” from Iran; the problems with the US Aircraft Carrier Gerald R. Ford; the “SAVE America Act” – the “biggest effort to disenfranchise voters in many decades”; the need to reform ICE; potential divergence of goals between Israel and the U.S. on Iran; etc.) has been covered by him previously, so I’m going to do an abbreviated version of the usual highlights. But one part I wanted to highlight was his response to a question on Trump’s supplemental funding request for the Iran “war of choice.”
- “Remember, the Defense Department got a huge plus up, hundreds of billions of dollars last summer in the bill that provided tax cuts for the wealthy and cut off healthcare for millions…I want my war fighters who don’t have a choice in this, if they’re ordered into combat by the president on this war of choice, we got to make sure that they are adequately equipped. But if the president’s going to start a war of choice, he should have come to Congress and come to the American people and make the case. He did not. So, I’m very reluctant to provide additional funding for this war of choice until the president lays out what we’re trying to accomplish and when we’re going to be done with it, what will meet his goal of having an accomplished mission…”
- “I think Americans are going to be soon seeing $4 a gallon gasoline. And even once this war stops, we’re going to see it for a long time to come, because when you destroy the the energy infrastructure, it’ll take months, if not years, to rebuild. This is what happens when you don’t have a clear plan. This is what happens when Donald Trump said, ‘oh my gosh,’ he didn’t think the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz or he didn’t think the Iranians would strike the other countries in the Gulf region. If he didn’t think that, then he has not been fully briefed by our intelligence community, because everyone in the intelligence community knew that if a war was started, Iran would strike those neighboring countries and close down the Strait of Hormuz. That is their ace card…or he was briefed and, once again, just chose to ignore it. But this is going to be a problem even if there is a declaration of victory that is going to haunt American consumers for months and months to come with record-high gas prices. Again, all based upon a war of choice because there was no imminent threat to America.”
