The White House’s Shifting Explanations for the Iran War

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1:44Jamie Tarabay:Radio. News.

1:46Nancy Cook:As the U.S. and Israel continue their attacks on Iran, the White House is now trying to sell Congress on the war it's already started.

1:53Jamie Tarabay:They have let this go on for a handful of days now without sort of a clear rationale of what has happened, how long this will go on. Bloomberg National Political Correspondent Nancy Cook. And now they're trying to play catch up both with lawmakers, with their own base. Now they're really on the defensive.

2:11Nancy Cook:President Trump made the case today that it was critical to hit Iran before it attacked the U.S. or an ally. We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about it. Members of the administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are holding an all-Congress briefing today. Rubio also briefed congressional leaders Monday and has been insistent that the Trump administration gave Congress, at least some high-profile members, the necessary notice before striking targets in Iran.

2:48Nancy Cook:We notified Congress. I mean, we notified the Gang of Eight. We notified congressional leadership. There's no law that requires us to do that. The law says we have to notify them 48 hours after beginning hostilities. Technically, Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. And members of Congress, mostly Democrats like Senator Mark Warner, have pushed back on the idea that the Trump administration followed constitutional procedure.

3:11Jamie Tarabay:Our system says before a president chooses to go to war, you've got to get a declaration. You've got to make the case to the American people. You've got to ask Congress. None of that took place as he chose to start this war Friday night.

3:23Nancy Cook:But there are also criticisms coming in from Trump's own party. In posts on social media, Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massey, both of Kentucky, said they were opposed to this war.

3:35Jamie Tarabay:There's been a real split within the MAGA sphere. You have some that are supporting the president and others who say this is not the America first president that we signed up for.

3:49Nancy Cook:I'm Sarah Holder, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, as conflict widens in the Middle East, tensions are also rising on Capitol Hill. What are Trump's plans for what comes next? And what power does Congress have to shape the direction of this conflict?

4:14Nancy Cook:Four days into the war with Iran, I sat down with Bloomberg National Political Correspondent Nancy Cook and national security reporter Jamie Tarabay to discuss the Trump administration's shifting justifications for launching joint strikes on Iran with Israel. So, Nancy, President Trump has said these attacks may last four to five weeks, possibly more. Monday night on Truth Social, he even said the U.S. had enough weapons to fight wars forever. What do we know about what he's looking to accomplish in Iran and how long he's actually willing to let this war go on?

4:48Jamie Tarabay:Well, I think that the president has given a lot of different statements to a lot of different people. He talked to about, you know, 10 or more journalists over the weekend, sort of highlighting what his rationales were and what the timeframe would be. There have been a bunch of shifting explanations for, you know, four to five weeks. We've also heard it could be much longer. You know, Secretary of State Rubio said that we were doing this because of Israel. Other people have said, oh, it's because of a nuclear weapon. I mean, I think that the point is, is that there has just been a remarkable amount of shifting justifications, both for the time frame and also the reason why we're doing this.

5:25Nancy Cook:And let's tick through some of these justifications that we've heard from the president so far. There's the idea that this could spark regime change, permanently disable Iran's nuclear missile capabilities, stop its shipments of roadside bombs and its support for armed proxy groups. All of these suggestions by Trump of what the reason for this war has been. And why is military intervention the strategy? Why not continue negotiations with Iran, for example?

5:52Jamie Tarabay:Well, I think that two things. One, Trump has always been very aligned with Israel and has always really followed their lead. And this is something that Netanyahu wants. You could argue why he wants to do that for his own political survival or for the safety of Israel. I'll leave that to others to decide. But Trump has always been very aligned with him. And so, you know, they are following Israel's lead on this. Secretary of State Marco Rubio basically said that on the Hill just outright yesterday, which is something that a lot of political people latched on to and were sort of thought that was interesting.

6:26Jamie Tarabay:But then two, more broadly, Trump really came back into office because people were disillusioned with the state of the economy. However, now that he is back in office for his second term, he doesn't have to run for reelection again. And he really wants to go for it in terms of establishing his legacy. And to him, that means remaking the world order, getting rid of leaders who he sees as bad actors. And he has really sort of changed his tune on nation building and become much more of a foreign policy hawk in a second term than I think anyone anticipated. And I think that a lot of the MAGA base is pretty surprised because in his second term, what we've seen is, you know, he captured and ousted Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in early January.

7:12Jamie Tarabay:Now we have the bombing of Iran. The administration is openly eyeing leadership changes in Cuba. And so it's just, you know, Trump really wants to remake the world order and he is going ahead and doing it. And so it's just a really interesting moment. And it's a really interesting moment politically in terms of his own base, because not everyone's happy with it and not everyone's going along with it. You know, I still think that people may fall in line. But right now, there's a lot of fracturing in the MAGA base with, you know, former lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and influencers like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly really calling out the president and saying this is not what we signed up for.

7:51Nancy Cook:And, Jimmy, I want to talk more about how these strikes in Iran fit into Trump's broader vision for U.S. military strategy around the world. As Nancy mentioned, the strikes came just a few weeks after U.S. forces seized Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, in a surprise raid. Is Venezuela being seen as a roadmap for what Trump wants to do in Iran? It's really interesting to see the fact that Trump has used his executive powers to launch attacks on other countries. I mean, last year, it wasn't just Venezuela and the boat strikes in the Caribbean. It was Yemen. It was Iran as well. And these were all moments during the year that he did not go to Congress to get any kind of authorization.

8:35Nancy Cook:conversation. Secretary Rubio said that there have been multiple, multiple briefings on the Hill. The quality and content of those briefings has varied, and this will all fall along political lines. We've seen senators who are Democrats who come out saying there's not enough detail, we don't understand, we need more. Senator Mark Warner from Virginia, who's part of the Gang of Eight and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that as a member of the Gang of Eight, he did not see anything that presented an imminent threat to the US, and he would have had access to classified information.

9:13Nancy Cook:But then you have people like Jim Risch, who is a senior Republican, also on the Intelligence Committee, who will tell you things like he was convinced before he even walked into these briefings, you know. So there are people who are determined to support the president no matter what. And then there are those who also just question everything he does. So everything that kind of comes out of these briefings is really challenging to pass. But there is 100 % of frustration, particularly when you see really sort of conservative hawks like Senator Roger Wicker, who's the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a hawk.

9:49Nancy Cook:These are the things that he cares about, not getting enough detail and not having that requisite communication between the Pentagon and the Hill or the White House and the Hill and sort of really having to play catch up all this time. And Jamie, I'm curious, how much did Congress know before the U.S. attacked Iran? I know you say it's hard to parse, of course, but what are the facts here? What we understand is that the Gang of Eight was briefed. Senior leadership was briefed. My understanding is, and Rubio said this yesterday, that they did give, you know, very sort of short notice to the senior leadership in Congress that an attack was happening or that something was underway, but they didn't want to say too much, obviously, because they didn't really want anything to get out before it happened.

10:39Nancy Cook:And how much does that differ from the kind of notification that's supposed to happen in these situations? Well, I mean, normally, there's a lot more attempts to get buy-in from the Hill. You know, there's a lot more outreach. There's a lot more, at least also preparing the public for something like this, you know. And normally, particularly when we look at the Iraq war, George W. Bush, you know, went to the hill, got Congress to approve it. It was a vote. And, you know, but we've seen every president since the War Powers Act came in in the 70s just ignore it. You know, Barack Obama did it in Libya.

11:14Nancy Cook:Bill Clinton did it in Kosovo. Ronald Reagan did it in Granada. And Donald Trump did it in his first administration. So it's there as a check. And as we have clearly seen in this first year of President Trump's second term, Congress has not been that much of a check on his powers and his decisions. After the break, what could Congress do to limit the Trump administration's use of force in Iran? And will they do it?

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14:36Nancy Cook:The Trump administration made a push for congressional support for the war in Iran on Tuesday. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Cain, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were on the Hill for a briefing open to all members of Congress. Jamie, talk me through what happens during that briefing and what you expect to come of it. People who want to be convinced will be convinced. People who don't want to be convinced will not be convinced. And then there's the people in the middle who actually have, you know, really sort of studied, concerned questions.

15:12Nancy Cook:And they're the ones that you always really want to talk to because they're the ones who kind of understand the sort of the breadth of what military action really is. And there are going to be so many people at these briefings if it's the entire, like, both the House and the Senate and all of their members. And I think at some point it's going to get a little leaky. Some staffers will chat. We'll be hearing more about this in reporting over the next couple of days. Whether people will be satisfied, I think, will largely depend on who they support in this situation. Well, I want to ask about another potential pivot point here.

15:53Nancy Cook:Both houses of Congress had already scheduled a vote attempting to curb Trump's use of military power. The vote actually, you know, predated the strike on Iran. Can you tell me about that effort and why it started originally? I think because of the last year that we've seen with all of the military actions that the White House has launched unilaterally. It started with Yemen, went into Iran, and then, of course, the boat strikes in the Caribbean. and then the Nicolas Maduro raid. And then the chatter that began to increase and we saw all of the military buildup off the coast of Venezuela begin to move to the Gulf in preparation now we know for these efforts against Iran.

16:37Nancy Cook:So in both houses, both chambers, Democrats and Republicans have sponsored bills to go to the floor to provide limits for what President Trump can do with the Iran war now. They're both expected to fail. And they're both expected to fail because in spite of some Republicans like Rand Paul or Thomas Massey, who are against this kind of intervention slash foreign action, there are Democrats who are very pro-Israel who have said they will either not vote or vote against it. So it's very symbolic at this point. When we keep talking about what the House and the Senate can and can't do to check the White House and executive power, because there's a majority in both chambers, that's really, really challenging.

17:27Nancy Cook:And I think that that's going to be another thing to watch in November, whether the House flips, whether the Senate also flips, and what difference that makes to the remaining years of President Trump's term. The most important part about all of this, and I think that that's something that we're going to see play out this week in Congress, is the people who voted for and people who voted against. And, you know, this was a thing that sort of like dogged Hillary Clinton after the Iraq war became intensely unpopular when she ran for president. And so when we see the war powers resolutions hit the floor in both the Senate and the House this week, people who don't vote will be seen to be given their tacit approval to the war.

18:11Nancy Cook:And if this drags on, we've just had more U.S. military casualties. Both Hegseth and President Trump have not said no to the possibility of ground troops that we see, you know, where Congress can and cannot, you know, have an effective role. And Nancy, in previous conflicts in the region, the U.S. has lined up international support as well, in particular from European allies. What kind of support or response has Trump been getting from Europe this time? What has the EU said about their willingness to be drawn into this broader conflict?

18:45Jamie Tarabay:Well, Trump didn't ask any of our typical allies for permission on this. I mean, apart from talking about it with Israel. But all of the European partners that we normally work with, you know, weren't given the heads up. But actually, I think that that made it easier for them. You know, they didn't have to, you know, commit to it. They didn't have to say they supported it. You know, they weren't put in an awkward position. So I think from their perspective, it's probably a good thing. you know, they didn't have to sort of negotiate with Trump on this. But I do think that it just shows the extent to which he is willing to go out alone on things and how much he is charging ahead without leaning on traditional alliances in terms of foreign policy.

19:25Jamie Tarabay:And this is just another instance.

19:28Nancy Cook:On the U.S. side, how do you expect these strikes and their aftermath to play out in the midterms? We might get a hint today as voters head to the polls in primaries in North Carolina and Texas.

19:39Jamie Tarabay:How they play out in the midterms depends how long the strikes go on and what it really does to the economy. So we saw the price of a gallon of gasoline jump overnight up to$3.11 a gallon. And so that is something that I'll be watching. If the strikes, you know, go on for two months and that ends up hurting the price of oil and the price of gasoline, then I think it will play into the midterms quite a bit. If the strikes are over, you know, in a few weeks and we're not embroiled into a huge regional conflict, then I feel like by the time people are thinking about who they'll vote for in the midterms, which typically happens in the summer and fall, then, you know, people will have moved on to other things.

20:20Jamie Tarabay:People are so upset about domestic policy issues right now, including the economy, ISIS handling of the immigration, that that's really their focus. And Trump voters don't necessarily want this nation building. And if that continues to disrupt the domestic agenda, I think Republicans will pay a price at the polls in November.