Washington D.C. –Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul (R-TX) appeared live on CNN’s “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer to discuss the Democrats’ dangerous War Powers resolution. Key highlights are below:

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On the flawed premise of the resolution: “I think the premise is flawed for the whole resolution. We are not engaged in active hostilities in Iran. I think if the President had responded say to the ballistic missile strike from Iran into Iraq and hit inside of Iran, clearly, that would require an authorized use of military force. I would fully support that. We clearly have a role as Members of the Congress to declare war and authorize use of military force. I will say Jeh Johnson, a good friend, former Secretary of Homeland, DoD legal counsel, who used to authorize these airstrikes, said this was a completely lawful military objective. No authorization was needed from Congress. I agree with the Democrat Secretary Jeh Johnson that in this case, we’re not there. It’s premature. And in fact, the President is trying to de-escalate this. He doesn’t want war. He wants peace in the matter.”

On Democrats’ political charade: “The last point is this usually goes through the Foreign Affairs Committee. We have hearings, we mark it up and it goes on the floor. The interesting thing about this is it’s a non-binding resolution that will never go to the President’s desk. So it’s a bit of a charade because it will never have the force and effect of law. I don’t understand if they are that serious about it why they wouldn’t do a resolution that would go to the President.”

On Soleimani: “We had a lot of veterans speak on the floor about what Soleimani did. He killed 600 Americans, wounded thousands of Americans on the battlefield. And a lot of these Members of Congress, now we have a veteran generation coming from the Iraq war, spoke about their personal experiences. We took out a designated terrorist under the Obama Administration with an authorized strike both by Article II of the Constitution and also the 2002 authorization in Iraq.”

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