Sen. Tim Kaine on War Powers and Iran 3/3/26

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1:27not go to war illegally in violation of the Constitution. Plus, Anthropik's AI agent gets a popularity boost while feuding with the Pentagon. Talk to Claude about that. Who? Claude. I don't know. Tech executive Nikki Kristoff, host of the Teched Up podcast, on the politics and policy struggles emerging during super fast innovation. In this moment, as we are in the middle of strikes on Iran, the government wants to use the best. Claude is the best. It's Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand by Joe in three, two, one. Here's Mike. Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box here on CNBC Live from the NASDAQ market site.

2:13In Times Square, I'm Joe Kernan, along with Kelly Evans, who were like this, which is right. Right, usually, if we have a, Becky's doing her Cures conference today. Normally we would put you there, but I have been told this is my bad side. So you want to stare, like, I feel like we're in combat here. Not to make a combat reference. We don't, you mean because of the person that's usually there? Well, it's just, it's an intense positioning. No, no, no, we'll be nodding. We'll be finishing each other's sentences. Let's get the latest on the fighting across the Middle East. CNBC's Dan Murphy joins us now from Dubai, which has had its share fallout as this goes on.

2:54Dan, good morning. Kelly, good morning. Well, the security situation in the Gulf has deteriorated in the last 12 hours. Two Iranian drones successfully hit the U.S. embassy compound in Riyadh this morning, forcing the State Department to order all non-essential personnel in Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait to leave. Emirati air defenses also intercepting Iranian missiles and drones over Abu Dhabi this morning. Authorities here say they are facing sustained barrages now. And in the north as well, Israel also sending its forces deeper into Lebanon to combat Hezbollah. But as you've just flagged, the big factor for markets right now is the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

3:39Iranian state media now threatening to target any vessel attempting that transit. The Pentagon says the lane is open, but the insurance market is saying otherwise this morning. We are seeing war risk premiums on the rise now. Both Brent and WTI moving on up in tandem. And in the gas markets as well, Qatar Energy, this is one of the world's largest LNG suppliers, is completely offline due to a drone strike. That is 20 % of the world's LNG supply gone in 48 hours. So the situation here is evolving fast. And behind closed doors, Bloomberg also reporting today that the UAE and Qatar are pressuring Washington now for a diplomatic off-ramp.

4:24But Washington also signaling in the last few hours that this Operation Epic Fury could last a month or more. So the bottom line here is Wall Street is looking at$80 Brent and ultimately wondering how soon all of this starts to impact the global economy. Kelly? Yeah, and Dan, when we look at the oil price, obviously we're following the U.S. benchmark WTI, but Brent prices are even higher. And of course, we saw natural gas prices spiking yesterday. And I don't know if there's any relief on that front yet because it depends a little bit on what happens with that Qatari producer. Exactly. And we're seeing a risk premium in both Brent and WTI right now.

5:05Of course, at the weekend, we saw OPEC moving to ultimately try and calm fears here, adding more barrels back into the market. But you have to really wonder here when we have the Strait of Hormuz, that critical oil chokepoint, essentially offline. And now the Iranians directly targeting Gulf energy infrastructure, including in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and also elsewhere. Then the real risk here is what could be an oil price shock that the market is looking out for. And remember as well, here in the region, you know, the Gulf, home to some of the world's most sophisticated sovereign capital as well.

5:42Between the PIF in Riyadh and Adia and Mubadala in Abu Dhabi and the QIA in Doha, we're talking about trillions of dollars in capital, some of the world's hottest venture and PE players. Leaders here obviously really concerned about what's going to happen next because the story here is much more than oil. Leaders here want to build a safe haven for people and for capital, not necessarily get involved in another long-running war in their own backyard. So they're watching not just what's happening in the markets, but also the direction of travel for this conflict, which ultimately has a pretty big question mark at the other end right now.

6:20Kelly? Yeah, Dan, we appreciate it. And, you know, we'll circle back. But I'm glad you highlighted once again what's going on there. I mean, those net gas prices spiking again up 40%, 83 % on Brenton. Now, as you said, is they're directly targeting Gulf infrastructure. For now, Dan, thanks. And the average retail price of gasoline at the pump in the U.S. crossing$3 a share or a gallon for the, everything's a share, for the first time since November. We always reference Gas Buddy. See, I would change that name. You know, we're talking about Iraq, Iran, and all these important, huh? Gas Buddy. Gas Buddy.

6:54Look, let's see what AAA, the fuel price gate. I'm sure it's, you know. Gas Buddy. Gas Buddy. Data shows they had already been rising for weeks as refiners transition to summer grade fuel. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. will work to mitigate rising energy prices. He told reporters Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and Energy Secretary Chris Wright would be unveiling some plans today. Yes, and we knew that going in would be a factor. And so we have a program in place that will begin to be implemented by Secretary Wright, Secretary Besson. We talked about it last night again about this program.

7:29We talked this morning and starting tomorrow, you will see us rolling out those phases to try to mitigate against that. President Trump is scheduled to meet with the two secretaries early this afternoon. It's the same thing for what it's worth on AAA 310. The all time high, five dollars a gallon, June of 2022. I don't think we're there yet. Meantime, J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon says he sympathizes with President Trump over the closing of Trump's bank accounts. but he doesn't think the president's lawsuit against J.P. Morgan holds water. Here's what he told Leslie Picker yesterday on that. I've heard the show, The Exchange.

8:04Take a listen. We're quite clear. I respect the president's right to sue the company. You know, we respect our right to defend ourselves. That's why you have courts. The case has no merit. It's going to have, you know, years of discovery type of thing. And, you know, we'll see what happens. But I agree with them. They have the right to be angry. I'd be angry, too. Like, why is a bank allowed to do that? And Diamond said banks are sometimes forced to close accounts of people in order to comply with regulators who could punish companies for bringing reputational risk to lenders. It was all the Fed and the woke Fed that when some people really criticize the Fed and Jay Powell's purview, it has a lot to do with things like climate regulations that seeped into what doesn't seem like anything.

8:55Yeah, that was a whole thing. But on questions of, so if the whole banking system currently has this whole know your customer thing, right? This is their whole thing. With the woke, D-E-I, E-S-G. So my question would be, is the issue that you must know your customer in order to, for instance, an Epstein kind of situation, for instance. Right. Okay. But how do you make a law to ensure that you're not shutting people down simply for political speech? I mean, you know, some you do, some you, you know. Well, it gives them cover to do a lot of things that probably, as Jamie Dimon said, if it was done to him, he wouldn't like it either.

9:33It's almost like there needs to be some sort of tribunal or place to go to to say, you know, hey, because it all seems like it's happening kind of in the shadows. People's accounts are getting closed, but then, you know, you're trying to prevent really bad kind of stuff from happening. I don't know. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he thinks his company shouldn't have rushed its recent deal with the Defense Department in a post on X. Altman said, I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy. A good learning experience for me as we face higher stakes decisions in the future. The Post follows news late last week that OpenAI had reached a deal with the Pentagon on using the company's AI hours after President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using rival company Anthropics tools.

10:24There's a big piece in the front page of the journal today about the interaction between Hegseth. What do we call it? Yesterday, we kept calling him defense secretary. What does he call him? They call him war secretary? All right. That's the title. Maybe they knew because they changed it a couple of months. In his ex post, Altman said OpenAI was working with the Pentagon to amend its agreement, including adding language, saying the company's AI technology wouldn't be used for domestic spying on Americans. He also said he didn't think that the government should have labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk.

10:58It's unclear why the Defense Department appears to have agreed to red lines from OpenAI similar to those that Anthropic was seeking. And it has a lot to do with, I think, a culture clash. The only thing I'll say about this, you know, it sounds like it was something that was done months or years ago. I mean, this was a few days ago. If there's an issue to be resolved, it should be resolved, right? I mean, it's one thing to talk about it as a tone and as a PR issue. But if there's an outstanding question about what's going on, there's still plenty of time to resolve that. Meantime, Anthropics' Claude Chatbot has surged to the top of Apple's free app chart since its public fallout with the Defense Department, War Department, whatever it's called now.

11:37The company now says it's bringing a memory feature to its free tier of service. So nonpaying users, Claude will be able to remember past conversations when giving answers to questions. That feature was previously only available to paying Anthropic subscribers. Anthropic will also make it easier to import conversation histories from other chatbots. Certainly, I mean, again, you see that Katy Perry had a tweet or a message sort of saying that she's supporting Anthropic. That's all these celebrities are getting behind it, helping it, you know, big galvanizing public support, getting it to the top of the app store.

12:09So there they go. Probably not that surprising. If you read the, it was, a lot of it was about autonomous weaponry, and Hegseth said, look, I'm not going to agree to anything that could make it less likely that our fighting men and women have the greatest ability to kill the enemy. And you could see, I mean, we've been through this. We've been through a whole segment of the population that doesn't want any defense contractors. There's, there's. Well, it's coming back to the fore. But aren't there shareholder services that don't want any investment in defense contracts? This was a big fight with Google and everyone else a decade ago.

12:48Right. Huge fights over whether they were doing business with the government. We don't need a defense industry. Then it was a pivot. Then Palantir. Then the cool kids were at the front of the line with their military contracts. And now there's kind of, I don't know, I don't know if it's slipping. I mean, there's protests on college campuses about a place where, you know, the people there are murdering people like that are at the protest. When Iran happens, crickets. Yeah. Not a single person out. People are, our youth are getting some strange indoctrination. And we, you wonder why we want to do that.

13:21Claude will solve it. Talk to Claude about that. Who? Claude. I don't know. Anthropics. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine on his opposition to the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and his call to return to diplomacy. To wage offensive war, the framers of the Constitution were absolutely plain. It's been understood since 1787. You got to come to Congress. is bitcoin complicated or do people just think it is for a long time it felt like something only tech experts or hardcore investors really understood between all the headlines new terminology and everything people say about it it can seem harder than it needs to be but what if getting started with bitcoin didn't have to feel overwhelming if you've been curious about bitcoin but haven't made the jump yet cash app makes it easy you can set up automatic purchases with zero fees or buy larger amounts also with zero fees start small or go bigger it's designed to be simple either way for a limited time new customers get ten dollars added to their balance just use code cash app 10 when you sign up and don't forget this part send at least five dollars to a friend in the first two weeks terms apply cash app is a financial services platform not a bank banking services provided by cash apps bank partners bitcoin services provided by block inc brand For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app slash legal slash podcast.

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15:55Welcome back. You're listening to Squawk Pod. Today with Joe Kernan and Kelly Evans. Here's Joe. Several Democrats have been voicing opposition to the strikes on Iran. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that it's unwise and unconstitutional and is calling for diplomacy instead. Senator Cain joins us now this morning. And Senator, it's good to see you. Thanks for joining us. We have had lots of discussions and I think your side of things has been well represented in terms of, remember the expression, if you break it, you own it. And it could be messy. It could be difficult.

16:38Dan Sonora asked me whenever we have someone that that has your viewpoint to ask a do you at least acknowledge that it's a good thing for the world that Khomeini is gone and and to just just mind boggling admiration for the U.S. forces and the Israeli forces and being able to carry out what they've done so far. Yeah. Yeah. Joe, those are easy questions. No sane person will miss the Ayatollah. And second, of course, I admire the troops. I got a kid in the military. I represent the most pro-military state in the United States. I'm on the Armed Services Committee. They serve wonderfully, just as they did in Iraq, just as they did in Afghanistan, just as they did in Vietnam.

17:20They were betrayed by poor civilian leadership in those instances. And that's why I believe we should not go to war illegally in violation of the Constitution. No shortcuts, no easy pass lanes. Let's do it the way we're supposed to with the debate and vote in Congress, where the reason is put before the American public. And we decide whether that reason is sufficient to justify sending our sons and daughters to potentially lose their lives. Right. I understand that, Senator. And I know I think you're on Twitter that you must have seen that some of the things that are circulated, how many times President Obama took military action without a declaration.

18:02When did we last have a declaration of war? I think it was World War II or something. Well, if you use declarations for our authorizations of military force, which are essentially the same, when President Obama wanted to wage military action against Syria for using chemical weapons, I blocked him. I said, you can't do that without Congress. I insisted that he bring it to Congress. When he wanted to do a nuclear deal with Iran giving sanctions relief from congressional sanctions without coming to Congress, I blocked him. It is the case that President Obama struck targets pursuant to the 9-11 authorization where Congress had voted to allow presidents to take action against terrorist groups.

18:43That was authorized action. And it's also the case that any president has the right to take action against incoming attacks. So President Biden using U.S. Navy assets to fire back against the Houthis who were firing on our ships in the Red Sea. Any president can take self-defense. But to wage offensive war, the framers of the Constitution were absolutely plain. It's been understood since 1787. You've got to come to Congress. That doesn't mean every president has, And it certainly doesn't mean that every Congress has. It's almost. It's almost always pledged that I would. Right. Right. OK. But it's almost a moot point.

19:23He's at least has probably 60 days under certain provisions to carry things out. And if we did go your route, Senator, what's happened over the past three days is impossible. It could never happen. Even even even informing Congress at times about certain raids that or actions that have to be done. That's not in the real world. It's not possible. So so in the real world. But it's going to be a good thing. But it's impossible. Down the road, you'll look back and say this was a transformative move. The world is a better place. Iran is the Middle East is a better place. They've the so many. And I'm not saying it'll get there's a long, probably be a long road and years and it could get messy.

20:12It could be Iraq. I'm not saying. But will you look back on it and say that took a lot of courage for the president to do that? And it was the right thing. Could that ever happen? Let me just underline the fact that I've made a argument about the Constitution and you said it was a moot point. I don't believe that. I don't believe the Constitution is a minor matter or a moot point. I said it's already happened. I said it's already happened. And he's got 60 days. And I don't think. No, no. If the War Powers Resolution passes, hostility stop. That's what the law says. And I'm asking every senator to do what you should ask them to do.

20:49Go on the record and declare, are you for this or against this? Anybody who's elected to a job like this should not hide under their desks and say, oh, you know, even though the Constitution says it's for Congress, Let's let the president do it and try to evade accountability. We've got to be accountable. Service members have lost their lives. Families are being notified today, and they are grieving. Others have been injured. More of that will happen. You're right, Joe. This could end up working out so that there's a new chapter in Iran and U.S. casualties are minimized. Or it could end up like Iraq and Afghanistan with 14 ,000 American service members and contractors dead, 65 ,000 injured, trillions of dollars that we don't know today.

21:33The consequences are possibly so massive. That's why the framers wanted Congress involved. But when I said this would never would never happen. We would be talking about it 20 years from now if we went your route and it would never happen. And it could it could be what we needed. They can't get a nuclear weapon. We cannot. I'm sure you agree with that. Yeah. Let me focus on that. Can't get a nuclear weapon. We had a deal under which they were blocked from getting a nuclear weapon. The first paragraph said Iran reaffirms that it will never ran out to acquire or develop. No, the first paragraph said they will never acquire, develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.

22:13And Donald Trump tore it up. He tore it up, alienating our allies, pushing our erstwhile adversaries, Russia and China, away and allowing Iran to sprint. Then Donald Trump obliterated their program, according to him, six months ago. They were not on a path to getting a nuclear weapon that raised any imminent threat to the United States, suggesting the need for this invasion. I mean, how many times are we going to negotiate? Another administration comes in. And Iran, meanwhile, is like smiling and laughing as all these as the pallets of cash arrive under some administrations. And and you say you say not going to.

22:52I think at some point at some point the talking is over, that listening to nodding and John Kerry, you know, pretending that there's a strong enforceable agreement. And sooner or later, you just say, you know what, we need to make sure this doesn't happen for the good of the world and stop the negotiating and allowing them to lie, dissemble, continue to kill Americans and cause trouble in the entire area. Joe, you're misrepresenting it. There was a deal. And when Donald Trump wanted to tear up the diplomatic deal, he asked his secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

23:27They said, stay in the deal because it's working. Donald Trump abandoned diplomacy and now our service members are dying as a result. Iran has shown that it will reach a deal to block its nuclear path. Donald Trump prefers war and he doesn't want to come to Congress to ask permission. And so it's it is Venezuela. It's the Pacific. It's Caribbean. It's Nigeria. It's Iran. Hey, maybe it's Greenland, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia next. We've got to go back to the Constitution. Just an interesting coda here, just kind of quickly on this. The Wall Street Journal thinks that, you know, opinion section, that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.

24:04You know, 1973, Vietnam War. So what would ever happen if it struck down? I mean, is it possible that these actions are more in line with a pre-1973 view of things? You know, it's a good question. I mean, it's 50 years old. It's not been struck down. So, you know, the Wall Street Journal doesn't get to declare what the law of the United States is. I take an oath to uphold the Constitution to support and defend it. It says only Congress can initiate war. A president can defend against ongoing attack without coming to Congress for permission. But the Constitution is clear about this. And and that is the oath that I take.

24:43And as you guys know, the Constitution has some phrases that are incredibly specific. You have to be 35 to be president, has other phrases that are vague, due process of law. The war powers part of the Constitution is among the most specific. and the constitutional notes about the convention make very plain exactly what they were trying to do. They wanted to restrain an executive's ability to go to war. And at the time, the executive was George Washington. They loved George Washington. They just thought like war was too big a deal to leave in the hands of any one person. We won't even get into any of the unconstitutional things that maybe certain parties overlook at different points in time.

25:29And we won't get into rising energy prices and the fact that the president isn't focusing on not enforcing federal laws and open board. I mean, there's a lot of both sides are at fault in viewing the Constitution through a different prism. So let's just follow it. Let's just follow Okay, well, let's all live by it then. Amen. We can't go back in time. All right, Senator Kaine, very good to have you on this morning. Thank you, guys. Take care. Okay, see you. Next on SquawkPod, AI is taking a bigger place on the battlefield. We'll get into how the technology is shaping the current conflict with Iran with industry insider Nikki Kristof right after this.

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