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The Opinions
Trump, Iran and the Slow Creep of Presidential Power
00:32:08
Three columnists break down the murky politics behind the strike.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:50]
Carlos Lozada
I'm Carlos Lozada, a columnist for Time's Opinion, and I'm joined to today by two fellow columnists, Jamelle Bouie and David French. Jamel David, thanks for being here.
- [01:00]
Jamelle Bouie
Hey, Carlos.
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David French
Hello. Thanks for having us.
- [01:03]
Carlos Lozada
Good to see you guys again. So sometimes it makes sense just to do the obvious thing, meaning that today we're going to talk about Iran and the United States. It's the story of the moment. Now, aside from David, who has some experience in the Middle East, I don't know that we'd all claim to be Iran specialists or foreign policy gurus, but we are all interested in the ways that war and national security can intersect with politics at home. So that's what I hope we can get into today, how the confrontation between Israel and Iran and the United States has played out in Washington, on the Hill, within Trump's MAGA coalition, which has experienced some stress over the president's decision to get involved. I should note we're taping early Wednesday afternoon, day two of a ceasefire. I believe so a lot things might change by the time folks hear this on Friday. Things might change before we finish recording, but we'll see. That's not gonna stop us. Trump has said this should be called the 12 Day War, I think in all caps, always. JD Vance has been sort of playing down the notion that it's a war, you know, that we're not in a sort of ongoing conflict. How are we defining war in this moment?
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Jamelle Bouie
I mean, by every measure of international law, this has been a war.
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David French
Yes.
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Jamelle Bouie
I mean, now, is it a short war? Is it a war that has been interrupted maybe temporarily by a ceasefire? Those are valid questions, but come on, it's a war.
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David French
Yeah. I don't know how else you would describe it, right? Like, what did J.D. vance said? We attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, not Iran. It's like that.
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Carlos Lozada
Yeah. We're not at war with Iran. We're at war with Iran's nuclear facilities.
- [02:51]
David French
That doesn't make any sense. Right. Like if someone, if a foreign country, I don't know, if Canada, it's fed up with all of our provocations. If Canada struck at the US Naval base at Norfolk, we wouldn't say, oh, we're not at war, Canada. We're just responding to the fact that they attacked our naval base. People be like, what? What are you talking about? Like, attacking the sovereign soil of another country is an act of war. That's just what it is. By definition.
- [03:24]
Carlos Lozada
Maybe Canada would say that it's at war with the US Trade Rep, but not with America overall.
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Jamelle Bouie
I mean. But the bottom line is these semantic games that we play in our politics just drive me nuts. War is a word with a meaning by every historical standard. We engaged in an act of war against Iran. Whether it was short or long, whether high casualties or minimal casualties, doesn't change the definition of the war. It is still a war.
- [03:53]
Carlos Lozada
This reminds me of Vladimir Putin calling the invasion of Ukraine a special military operation. Or the Obama administration rebranding the global war on terror as. What was it? Overseas contingency operations, I think was the term of art. There's always this effort to call something other than what it is.
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Jamelle Bouie
I mean, Truman called the Korean War a police action.
- [04:17]
David French
That's right, a UN Police action. That's what that war was.
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Jamelle Bouie
Notable lack of involvement of actual police in this police action. It was a lot of B29s and very few, like, beat cops. But, yeah, there's been a lot of euphemisms used over the years.
- [04:36]
Carlos Lozada
So, David, you're a close follower of MAGA World. This is not a conflict that Trump inherited, but one he entered willingly just five months into this new administration. What do you make of that, given how often he's campaigned against the warmongers and the globalists who drag America into foreign wars?
- [04:55]
Jamelle Bouie
Well, I mean, he did absolutely inherit the ongoing war between Israel and what we'll call the Iranian axis, whether it's Hezbollah in the north, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran itself. He inherited a Middle east that had been very transformed by a series of successful Israeli military attacks that had rendered Iran far more vulnerable than it had been in a generation. And I don't think that that is an insignificant piece of this puzzle. But then when he took the presidency, he took the presidency with a coalition that on this issue in particular was very divided. So you have a lot of people in sort of what you might call normie Republican world who think of the Republican Party as absolutely committed to the defense of the modern state of Israel. And then you have this whole other part that you're going to call sort of really maga. This is the people who came in to the GOP through Trump. There is a rising new right that is both anti Semitic, very hostile to Israel, and also much more isolationist. This is the America first, and the only thing that united them was Donald Trump. And so you saw this fight play out very angrily online in the days before the bombing between the new right in what you might call Normie Republicans. But then when the Normie Republican view prevailed and there was an attack on Iran, at that point you began to see how once the big guy makes his call, Republicans overwhelmingly supported him. So there was a lot of division beforehand. But we always have to remember the fundamental organizing principle of the modern Republican Party is that Trump is right.
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Carlos Lozada
One of the specific battles that's come to the fore in recent days has been over war powers. And that's been an issue on the Hill in particular. As a reminder, here's what speaker of the House Mike Johnson said earlier this week.
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Jamelle Bouie
For 80 years, presidents of both parties have acted with the same commander in chief Authority under Article 2. You had President Biden used three times in middle east operations. President Obama went on an eight month campaign bombing Libya to take down the regime there. I never heard a Democrat balk about any of them.
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Carlos Lozada
And here's what Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, said on Face the Nation this week.
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Jamelle Bouie
Congress was on vacation last week when all this was happening. You haven't been briefed on anything? We haven't been briefed. They should have called us all back. And frankly, we should have debated this war powers resolution that Ro Khanna and I offered instead of staying on vacation and doing fundraisers and saying, oh, well, the President's got this under control. We're going to cede our constitutional authority.
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Carlos Lozada
And by the way, that quickly elicited a truth social post from Trump. Get this bum out of office asap. Referring to Massie. So, Jamel, what is Congress's role really supposed to be here?
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David French
I mean, this is such a simple question, but there's a lot of ways you can answer it. A lot of perspectives here. My own perspective is that decisions to go to war, decisions to use military force should first and foremost go through Congress, especially in the case of something like the attack on Iran, where US Intelligence agencies weren't saying that Iran was at imminent threat of developing a nuclear weapon. There is time here to deliberate. And I think there needs to be some kind of public discussion and public deliberation in Congress because the President is, is ultimately exercising the will of the broad public. And there needs to be some sense that the broad public has considered what's about to happen and is either giving its assent or not. Now, that's what I think things ought to be in practice. How things are is that the President of the United States has broad authority to use military force kind of wherever and whenever the President sees fit. But even within that, there typically is, and there certainly ought to be some kind of congressional authorization of the force or some sort of legal basis for the President's use of force. And in this particular case, I mean, what's been interesting to me is that first, the administration, the President did not initially speak in ways that would suggest they're sort of leaning on kind of like an inherent power to use military force to deal with imminent threats. He didn't really speak in those terms. And there isn't really any congressional authorization. Like, I, I don't know anyone who thinks the 2001 AUMF, like, authorizes this.
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Carlos Lozada
That's the authorization of use of military force after 9 11.
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David French
That's right. That's right. Which is specifically about giving the President the, the authority these military force to respond to those responsible for the 911 attacks, of which Iran is not part of that category of, of entities. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk of the War Powers act, which presupposes that there's some sort of legal authorization like lawful use of military force here. And so in that case, the President needs to let Congress know. And to restate what I said at the start, I'm of the view that, yes, that's at the very least what should happen. And there needs to be some kind of legal authorization. It is actually against the very explicit intent of the U.S. constitutional order to allow presidents to sort of use military force without any kind of regard for Congress.
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Carlos Lozada
David, I'm sure this is something you've been thinking about.
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Jamelle Bouie
Oh, don't get me started, Carlos. I mean, I disagree with Representative Massie about many things. I agree with him about this. I think he's completely correct. I mean, look, if you go back and you look at the structure of Article 1 and Article 2, it's really not hard to lay out. The structure is Article 1 Congress declares war. Article 2. The President commands the troops once war is declared. So now there are obvious grays and complicators. You don't have to wait for Congress to declare war. If you're under actual attack. Like you can shoot back and the President's command authority locks in there. But if you're gonna do more than just shoot back, you gotta go to Congress. So for example, after Pearl harbor on December 7, our forces were fully engaged in fighting the Japanese in self defense. But FD didn't just say, well we're at war, let's go. He got a declaration of war, right? And so can I add another example?
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David French
Can I add another example to that? Just I think it's a good one. The Civil War after Fort Sumter, Lincoln calls up like requisitions troops, puts soldiers in the field and then he goes before Congress and basically says, listen, I had to defend the Union. This is what I had to do. I need your authorization, I need actually your assent to let me continue prosecuting.
- [12:07]
Jamelle Bouie
This war after 9, 11. I mean Bush went and got an authorization for use of military force. I mean that is the way it is supposed to work. But it had been a bipartisan project for a long time of presidents deploying troops without proper congressional authorization. A lot of people don't realize this, but the Korean War, there was never a congressional vote for the Korean War. That was a big, big war. And we fought that without a congressional vote. So this has been going on for a while. So Congress in the 1970s decides to try pare back presidential authority, reintroduce some constitutional rationality. And the way they tried to deal with the gray areas was to say, look, if we're engaged in combat or if we launch an offensive operation like was launched against Iran, you have to consult within 48 hours Congress. Congress then has 60 days to approve or not. If it does not approve of the military operation, you have 30 days to unwind it. Presidents have said it's not constitutional and have argued that it's not constitutional for a long time. But I think it is absolutely constitutional. It should be deemed as absolutely binding. But the sad fact of the matter is, and this is, Mike Johnson is articulating the view of a lot of members of Congress. They don't want to do this, right? They do not want to exercise their constitutional authority. And that's been the reality for generations now. And so I can fully support the idea of striking Iran, but it should be absolutely done in a constitutional manner.
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Carlos Lozada
Let's look at the Democrats for A moment. So Alexandria Ocasio, Cortez and others have said that Trump taking America to war in this way is an impeachable offense. Now, if memory served me right, Trump has been impeached twice by the House and acquitted twice. On Tuesday, the House blocked efforts to impeach him again over these strikes. So not to sort of worship at the altar of, like, what's savvy, what's smart, strategic politics, but is it wise for the Democrats to bring up impeachment once more in this context?
- [14:11]
David French
The question of whether it's wise, like, I don't know about that. I think that if. If you take seriously or write the claim that the attack on Iran was illegally done without congressional authorization, like, exceeds the power the president has, then, yeah, this is. You would. You would naturally want to introduce articles of impeachment. I think part of the political question here is that for your typical voter, right, like your typical American right, they may not be able to distinguish what makes this different from any previous set of strikes called by any previous American president. And so it's like, oh, if we're going to impeach Trump here, then why not. Why not introduce articles of impeachment for Obama and Libya? And so that's why I'm sort of like the question of whether it's wide. I'm not actually sure that it is. As much as I obviously don't like Donald Trump, I'm not certain that it is wise to introduce articles of impeachment around this particular thing, in part because impeachment, being a political process, depends on being able to sell to a public that, like, actually something happened here that demands removal of the president. And for better or worse, I don't think Americans understand this kind of use of military force as an impeachable offense. Now, I will say that I do think Democrats ought to be much more comfortable criticizing Trump and criticizing any president about the use of military force. And that also depends on Democratic members of Congress also taking their constitutional responsibilities seriously. And, you know, as David was saying earlier, Congress in general has abdicated these responsibilities, and that includes a lot of Democrats. Like AOC might just be, you know, an outlier here, but like many Democrats have been very reluctant to. To really ever question the use of military force.
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Jamelle Bouie
I mean, this is such a fraught area because it is very easy to find members of Congress who will run to the War Powers Resolution when the opposing party engages in military action. It's very hard to find members of Congress who've been outspokenly consistent on this issue. And so what that does is it means that when you file articles of impeachment on an issue, when your own party has done the same thing, I would urge you not. I would say that is a good. There's a good standard. If a president of my party did it, and I didn't file article impeachment when they did it, but I am going to file it when the opposing party does it. You're part of the cynicism with politics problem. And I think what the American body politic needs at this point is sort of a reboot. It needs leadership to come in and say, even though I am president and even though the president has traditionally grabbed everything it could, I am running on a platform of restoring constitutional governance. And that means I'm going to go to office and I'm going to advocate for legislation that takes power away from me. And when we find that person is when we're going to have an opportunity for a reboot. Until we find that person, we're trapped. Or until Congress grows a spine, we're trapped in this moment. And this moment is embittering America and is yielding no lack of ammunition for the idea that politics is just a cynical exercise where my team can do no wrong and the other team can do no right.
- [17:37]
David French
And also, I'd say the expansion of the president's powers of war, making it ends up extending everywhere else, right? Like, for reasons that make total sense. If you are the President of the United States and you can just, like, attack other countries without any real challenge from any other, you know, the courts will probably defer to you, Congress is going to defer to you. It's not a big leap to go, if I can do this, why can't I just change tax policy on my own? Right? Like, why can't I do these other things that are less consequential or less immediately consequential than war on my own? And it kind of just inculcates an attitude of I should be able to do things unilaterally. Why do I need Congress to get behind me? And I'm not just sort of. This isn't just speculation. Like, past presidents have basically said this. They basically said, right, that, like, you know, the thing about foreign affairs is it just gives you a looser hand. You don't. You're not as tied to what Congress wants. And this is both freeing and also somewhat embittering when it comes to limits on other authority you might have. And so you're gonna. You're gonna press up against those limits as much as possible, try to. To push past them. And it's. It distorts the entire constitutional system like it just does.
- [18:49]
Carlos Lozada
I remember in George H.W. bush's memoirs or the various books he wrote, he would often complain about precisely that. Like, he felt so much more comfortable in foreign affairs, in part because he had that freer hand. One thing I've been wondering about the Democratic response to the Trump administration strikes on Iran is that they've focused on the process questions, right, on the issue of war powers, on, you know, not getting proper authorization or consultation with Congress, a little bit at the expense of dealing with the substantive issue of whether they maybe kind of might agree with the need for the strikes. And I. I feel that in some ways, the. The process questions are a convenient cover to not have to engage on the substantive question as to whether this is something that is. Is a good idea or not. How did you guys see that kind of question on the Democratic side, on the real specifics of it? Is it a thing that they would kind of want to see happen?
- [19:57]
David French
I think you're right to see the process questions as ways of avoiding the substantive question. I think that. I know for my part, for me, I do not think the strike in Iran was a good idea. And I think that the president's tearing up of the Iran deal during his first term should have set the conditions up for this and that I see no evidence to think that the administration could manage the fallout from these attacks, which is. Which is. I mean, I think that's being borne out as we speak. And so, for my part, my substantive critique is in line with my process critique that not only was this a bad idea to do, but it was a bad idea done in the wrong way. But I do sense that among Democratic officeholders, there is this real hesitance about, like, making an argument either way, which I think speaks to a general lack of confidence about one's ability to speak coherently and fluently on national security, as well as, I think, what is just like real pressure amongst political elites to be supportive of these kinds of actions.
- [21:12]
Jamelle Bouie
You know, I'm going to absolutely defer to Jamel on the internal assessments of the Democratic Party, but I would say this. I would say broadly of Americans. Not many Americans are happy with the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon. I don't think many Americans are happy with nuclear proliferation broadly. So I do think that there's this interesting moment we have where there's a lot of feeling in America that Iran should not have a bomb, a Lot of feeling in the international community that Iran should not have a bomb, but also a very low trust with Donald Trump that he's the man to handle this. I'm thinking of a David Frum piece in the Atlantic that's just titled Right Move, Wrong Team. And that's kind of how I feel as well. I feel like it's the right move. Jamel and I disagree about that. But I have real concerns, real concerns that these are the people who have the wisdom and discernment necessary to actually pursue this intelligently.
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David French
Just not to make this a debate, but my kind of immediate question is, well, wouldn't that just make it the wrong decision then? Right. Like that the decision part of whether whoever makes it a correct decision is precisely who is engaged in doing it. Like if I need to slice a cucumber and you need a sharp knife for that, it's a good decision. If my wife grabs a sharp knife and slices the cucumber, however much the cucumber may need to be sliced, I'm not going to let my 6 year old do it. Right. It would be a bad decision for me to let my 6 year old slice the cucumber, irrespective of what needs to happen with the cucumber.
- [22:47]
Jamelle Bouie
Yeah. I think the problem is that if you say, well, we don't need to do anything because I don't trust these people and Iran ends up with a bomb as a result of that. You have the bomb, you have the Iranian nuclear threat that you have when the prior team, as bad as it was, may have had an opportunity to stop it. So I think of the quality of the team is much more relevant to the prospects of success. And if the prospects of success get to zero, then of course you don't do it. But at the end of the day, I'm very, very alarmed by the downside risk of the Iranian nuclear bomb. And then that gets us, Jamel, to a question that I don't think any of the three of us are qualified to answer, which is, how imminent was that threat? Was this something that action had to be taken now, as Israeli intelligence seems to indicate, versus not as Tulsi Gabbard seems to argue. So there's a lot we don't know. But that's why when push comes to shove, I'm going with right move more than wrong team because of the. The profound threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon.
- [23:54]
Carlos Lozada
So, Jamel, depends on how desperately you need that salad, right. Whether you end up cutting the cucumbers, you know how hungry you are. And how, how bad your diet has been that you, you have to really start consuming more salad. I want to end on a question about foreign policy doctrines with a capital D. Dan Dresner, who's a political scientist at Tufts, has this joke that's funny because it's true that all you need for a good foreign policy doctrine is a good adjective and a good noun. You take any kind of foreign policy sounding adjective, global, tactical, strategic, constructive, and any foreign policy sounding noun, you know, engagement, containment, projection, deterrence, and just combine them mad libs way, and you get like a great sounding foreign policy, jogging, tactical deterrence, strategic reassurance, take your pick. So with that caveat, I would ask you. So if America first has been the key principle slash slogan that Trump has articulated so far to explain sort of how he sees engagement in the world, have the events of recent days changed that? In other words, if you were to define a Trump doctrine based on what he's done, not just what he said, what would it be? Now.
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Jamelle Bouie
You know, I think of the Trump doctrine in foreign policy the same as the Trump Doctrine in domestic policy. Trumpism isn't an ideology. It's the ambition and will to power of one man. And so his doctrine is what will help me. Even those elements where he has at least some degree of long standing foreign policy or domestic policy, a long standing position. So very few politicians have loved tariffs as much as Trump has loved tariffs, or very few politicians have loved immigration restrictions as much as Trump loves immigration restrictions. But he will also, when he perceives that his positions are harming his personal political prospects, he'll take his foot off the gas. I mean, this is where that taco comment comes from. Trump always chickens out is, I'm going to press the gas on tariffs. Oops, this isn't working out. I'm going to stop. He's been very pro Israel in part because he has accurately seen. This is one thing that really draws his base to the Republican, the normie Republican base to him. But my goodness, didn't he voice some real fury earlier this week at the, you know, at Israel when he thought, I negotiated a ceasefire and I wrapped a bow around this. We just won the 12 day war. Done, done, done. And Israel interfered with that. And then he was angry, angry at both Israel and Iran when he was interviewed, where he said, you know what?
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David French
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
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Jamelle Bouie
I think if Trumpism is, it is the will to power of one person, what is in it for me. And then in an interesting way, how he determines what's in it for him is often based on the last person he talked to. So it's one of the reasons why he kind of goes back and forth constantly, all the time.
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David French
I would say that to the extent that there's anything like a doctrine, anything you can use to consistently predict Trump's actions on the foreign stage, it's basically whether or not he can be aggressive without any pushback. I mean, he's a bully, right? He has the attitude and the mentality of a bully. And as everyone knows, bullies actually don't want people who are gonna fight back. And so if you can convince Donald Trump that you can take an has no blowback, no real consequences, no one's gonna push back, then he'll do it. And I think you're seeing that here, right, that he wants this ceasefire so badly. Not because I think Donald Trump cares about peace in a meaningful sense, but because he doesn't like the idea that there might be adverse consequences for his personal political standing.
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Jamelle Bouie
And there's an interesting contrast with previous presidents because both Obama and Bush, in different ways, made an investment in a particular kind of policy and sought to pursue that policy even when there was evidence of electoral blowback or pushback. So, you know, there was evidence emerging as early as early 2009 that parts of Obamacare could result in some electoral blowback for Democrats. But Democrats absolutely dug in and passed the Affordable Care act. Bush In 2006, after these disastrous midterms, which were in part related to the conduct of the Iraq War, doesn't start to pull out. He does doubles down the surge because there was a belief, there was a theory of the case in both of these political parties. These parties weren't just designed for the sole purpose of electing human beings. They were designed for the purpose of advancing a particular set of policies. The thing about Trump is he took the natural tendency of politicians to sort of do this thing. The possibly apocryphal quote from a French revolutionary. There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. That is a inherent temptation in politicians. But Trump has so little core, moral core, policy core, et cetera, that he is sort of raised to an art form, this idea that I am a person that is single mindedly dedicated to my own advancement versus I'm a person who is dedicated to the advancement of an idea or even a nation. It's just an enduring irony to me that the Trumpists have tried to corner the term patriot. Now, I think many of them are. I'm not casting aspersions on the patriotism of my Republican friends and neighbors, but they grab so closely and tightly to that word patriot, which implies selflessness in service of the country, and they pour it into devotion for a man who is more selfish than about any national politician I've ever seen.
- [30:19]
Carlos Lozada
I guess this comes down to how much being MAGA is really about principle and how much is about allegiance. Allegiance to, as David put it, the will to power of one person. And it's in moments like these, of decisions of life and death, of war and peace, that that tension really comes to the fore. As far as the doctrine, for me, I'm not being completely glib with this, that I think the Trump foreign policy doctrine is to win a Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump. You talk to White House reporters, people who cover him closely. This is something he's obsessed with. I guess the thinking is if Barack Obama can win a sort of aspirational Nobel Peace Prize, maybe Donald Trump can do something that would win him the Peace Prize as well, and that would be the kind of legacy cementing thing that he sees for a leader who sort of has all these kind of populist pretensions, he's quite fixated at times on these sort of elite cultural markers. On that note, thank you, David. Thank you, Jamel. I hope we have more opportunities to get together and chat.
- [31:34]
Jamelle Bouie
Thanks so much, Carlos.
- [31:35]
David French
Thank you for having us.
- [31:54]
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