Senate Republicans Tuesday said they were mostly OK with Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to order military strikes in Iran — and seemed unbothered with the idea of the administration delaying its intelligence briefing on the matter.
Earlier in the day, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) criticized the administration for pushing off its briefing for senators.
“It's evasive. It's derelict,” he said. “They're bobbing and weaving and ducking. Senators deserve full transparency. There is a legal obligation for the administration to inform Congress about precisely what is happening.”
The delay came, in part, because Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio could not attend the briefing, since they were traveling with the president to the Nato summit in the Hague.
“I’m going to check on why that happens,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Independent.
But Republicans by and large seemed unbothered with the delay.
“I think in some ways it's good because we're going to have the SecDef and others here that wouldn't be here if we had the briefing today so I don't mind the two days,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told The Independent.
On Monday, Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, but then expressed frustration at both countries after both sides broke the terms of the ceasefire. Trump in turn said Israel and Iran “don't know what the f*** they are doing.”
But Republicans seemed to be willing to give Trump a pass for his salty language despite the fact that support for Israel is de rigueur in the Republican Party.
“I think he wants there to be a lasting peace and that’s hard,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told The Independent. A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Cornyn said he was OK with the delay.
“I'm getting briefings regularly, but I think it's good for the everybody to here as well,” Cornyn said.
Despite the errant criticisms of some voices on the right like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia or Thomas Massie of Kentucky, most Republicans expressed their support for Trump’s actions, particularly in the Senate, where most of the Republican senators are hawks.
But Democratic senators expressed their anger at being kept in the dark.
Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had questions after Iran hit a US base in Qatar, which mostly appeared to be “symbolic.”
“But will they get better organized and use their proxies and begin to conduct operations, or will some of their proxies spontaneously decide to take action?” Reed told The Independent. “The second issue is, you know, do they come to the conclusion that their only protection is to have a nuclear device?”
Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona dismissed the excuse that they wanted to make Hegseth and Rubio available.
“I think they should send who they have available” he told The Independent. Kelly said he wanted to know the battle damage assessment after the strikes and what happened to the uranium.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former Middle East analyst, also wanted to know the battle damage assessment.
“I think it's a basic expectation that they come and give us an update, particularly those that are on security committees,” she told The Independent.
“I don't know the explanation. I don't know if they've provided one, but it's, to me, a real issue that they can't just come and give us an hour-long briefing on what's actually happening when it comes to issues.”
Speaker Mike Johnson later said the House would be briefed on Friday. But before then, Democrats in the House criticized the lack of transparency.
“This is not the way democracy is supposed to work,” Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont told The Independent. “Keep people in the dark.”
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