A Democratic rogue isn’t buying his party’s argument that President Donald Trump was on the cusp of committing war crimes in Iran and plans to again stop their attempts to handcuff his policing power in the region.
“If you want to talk about a war crime, you know, Iran is a 47-year-old war crime,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said on “Hannity” Wednesday night.
Fetterman, a staunch backer of Israel, has time and again broken with his party on the war, joining Republicans to block several attempts by Senate Democrats to reassert Congress’ authority in the ongoing conflict.
He is again fracturing from the party line, as several of his peers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have declared that Trump’s Iran mission, Operation Epic Fury, was a failure.
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Congressional Democrats have demanded that Trump be removed from office for his posts on Easter Sunday and in recent days, in which he laid out an apocalyptic ultimatum for Iran to either reopen the Strait of Hormuz or see their “civilization die tonight.”
“If you target civilian infrastructure for the purposes the president was talking about — in other words, what he’s saying is, if you don’t open the Strait of Hormuz, I’m going to blow up civilian infrastructure — that’s a war crime,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said ahead of the ceasefire deal struck Tuesday night.
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Schumer, speaking at a press conference in New York City Wednesday, argued that Trump’s action in Iran was “one of the very worst military and foreign policy actions that the United States has ever taken.”
“This war has made us worse off today than before it started,” Schumer said.
Fetterman strayed from top Senate Democrats’ messaging against Trump’s campaign in the Middle East and countered that the president’s actions have been for the better, particularly as negotiations for a full end to the conflict are gearing up.
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“Everything that’s happened so far has made the world safer, and now we are in a position to finally finish it this way, with these kinds of important negotiation points,” Fetterman said on “Hannity.”
Senate Democrats plan to launch another attempt to handcuff Trump’s war powers when the upper chamber returns in the coming days. It would mark the fourth such attempt and will likely again be blocked by Republicans, despite some growing wary of the conflict.
Like previous attempts, Fetterman plans to cross the aisle to block Democrats’ plan.
“We are the force of good in the world and … now, we’re not even 40 days into this,” Fetterman said on “Hannity.” “And now I’m reading that they’re going to force another war powers vote, and I will vote against that, because we have to stand by our military and allow them to accomplish the goals of Epic Fury.”