It makes no sense to limit the president's ability to defend the nation when there is imminent danger, Rep. Scott Perry told Newsmax on Monday.
Appearing on Newsmax's "Newsline," the Pennsylvania Republican, who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was reacting to accusations that President Donald Trump violated the War Powers Act by not informing Congress ahead of time about the air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Perry said that "certainly, we don't want to take away ... the constitutional power of Congress to declare war, but we also don't want to hamstring the president" so that he has "no ability to safeguard the United States of America or its interests abroad" when there is imminent danger.
The congressman said, however, that rhetoric over the War Powers Act "is going to continue, because the Democrats are just searching aimlessly in the night for anything that will improve their standing with the American people, and they think that they have something here."
Perry conttinued: "Apparently they're not familiar with the War Powers Act," because the president has 48 hours to inform Congress of a mobilization.
Reacting to Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie's opposition to the strike on Iran because he said there was no imminent danger to the U.S., Perry said that "Thomas is a friend of mine, and I know he loves the Constitution but I'm not sure that Thomas can say there was no imminent threat, and if he knows more than the president, then I think there are going to be people who have an issue with that."
Perry insisted that "I'm glad that Iran, the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, is without the ability to strike anybody with a nuclear capability."
He added that "I don't know what is going to satisfy people that are unhappy with the president, but maybe it's going to take a nuclear strike from some rogue terrorist country to wake them up to the possibility of the horror of what can happen in the world today."
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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