and thirdly, lawrence, a very sad misunderstanding of what our european allies are looking for. it was a miss and a big miss. let s listen to what h.r. mcmaster actually said about this. i think it s extraordinary that there would be an expectation that the president would have to say explicitly that he supports article 5. of course he does. the united states is a signatory to the treaty. and as a member of the alliance. your reaction to that? i can only shake my head. it would break my heart to have to go out and perform that kind of kabuki dance to try to explain an enormous miss like not standing up for article 5. but at least he is standing there saying so the nato allies can hear the united states is a signatory to the treaty and a member of the alliance. of course we support that. he gets those words on the record, at least. he does. but he is not the president of the united states.
action when he sent those 59 tomahawk missiles to destroy assad s ability to use chemical weapons against his own people. i wanted to ask your initial thoughts, and also about these questions about, did the president have legal authority to do that? sean spicer in the briefing was explaining that he believes he does under article ii, and yet you have other members of congress saying, hold on a second, we don t think that s right and maybe you have to come to congress if you want to take any further action. he had the legal authority to do it, certainly. it was in the interest of the united states to stop these gas attacks. but beyond 60 days, the president would have to come to congress for an authorization of use of military force. and it is now incumbent i think on the administration to work with congress on a strategy. we now need to work closely for a long term strategy, in terms
article ii of the constitution is pretty clear. when it s in the national interest of the country, the president has the full authority to act. he did that. he and his team spoke extensively to congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to describe the action that was being taken forward. i think we have fully fulfilled every obligation with the power vested in article ii clear, with the president s ability to act. in terms of things happening here at the white house behind the scenes with staff members. obviously there were some ideological and policy differences on this particular military action last week. does the president believe, or do you believe this has been smoothed over in the short term or is there a long time solution with steve bannon and skwraeur rid kushner. do you believe, or does the president believe there s that s sean spicer.
one thing. and georgetown s nicolas krants joins us. is he overstepping his constitutional powers? well, i think that he is. article ii of the constitution says that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. what the president has done in a number cases looks like rewriting the law than executing it. is he doing anything more than his predecessors? i think he is. president bush occasionally declined to execute statutes because he believed they were unconstitution unconstitutional. that s another matter. but president obama is declining to execute laws without a claim of constitutionality just for policy preference. let me go to obama care. specifically, has he done anything in that law that s overstepping the constitution in your opinion? yeah, i think that he has. he suspended the employer mandate for a year.
that he had been abused before that mike mcqueary incident, after the mike mcqueary incident, and he intends to the sue, because he says his abuse, he believes, could have been stopped if penn state officials had done the right thing back in 2001. okay, so you re saying possibly here, we could be seeing a civil suit. we know sandusky, as we mentioned, convicted of those 45 counts, yet to be sentenced. would this have an impact on that case? i d t foresee it having an impact on that case. he didn t take the stand and testify during that trial. it s not clear, at this point, if prosecutors are going to bring more charges against sandusky, because when he goes to be sentenced in september, he s really looking a de facto life sentence, because of his age and the amount of years of the convictions he carries. so whether or not this becomes a new part of a new criminal case is pretty unlikely. where, thing, has the potential to impact a criminal case is actually in the cover-up