pretty sad, really, and as i say, it s bizarre because if these folks wanted to exercise congressional control over this decision, bob corker had the vehicle to do so with democratic support. but, you know, people like me, i m staying with it. but, you know, this is getting close. i mean, can you imagine, rachel, you know, you re too young to remember. i remember if the congress had gotten in touch with khrushchev in the middle of the cuban missile crisis and said, don t pay any attention to this guy kennedy, deal with us, you know, that s essentially what we re talking about here, the president lead on foreign policy and, as i say, i believe congress should have a role, but let s exercise the role once we know what the deal is and in a responsible, nonpartisan way. that s the way it ought to be handled. do you think that what the senators have done with this letter could materially affect the likelihood of a successful deal being achieved? it s possible. i think the possible real
negotiations with our government, that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. the offices of our constitution have different characteristics, for example, the president may serve only two four-year terms whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of six-year terms. also, cat starts with c. pie, good. boo-boo, owie. i mean, really? iran s foreign minister replied to the republicans and tom cotton with his own really nicely passive/aggressive letter written in english, quote, zarif expressed astonishment that some members of u.s. congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own president and administration administration. quote, it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy. you idiot. republicans in congress have been working very hard to kill the administration s ta
they ve been doing that for a very, very long time. they threatened legislation to try to scuttle the deal. that was something that might have even had democratic support before mitch mcconnell tried to fast track it last week and got all screwed up. they invited israel s prime minister to give a speech denouncing the deal before the whole u.s. congress. the most visible effect of that thus far appears to be the endangerment of benjamin netanyahu s prospects for re-election at home. well done. but this, this letter is such a sad sack attempt to stop the talks and stop the deal that the iranians are publicly marveling at how dumb this seems. the foreign minister of iran basically just told them off about what they don t understand about the constitution and he actually has a better argument than they do. and at home just politically it also seems like an explicable strategy for the republicans. they took something on which they were united and were
ever, when people can t all vote together on a we like puppies bill or we like pie, democrats and republicans have been able to come together no matter what even when the white house was super opposed, they have been able to come together and vote together against iran until now because now a brand spanking new freshman republican senator from arkansas named tom katz has figured out a way to blow up that consensus. senator tom cotton wrote an open letter to the leaders of iran and got 46 of his senate republican colleagues to sign on to the letter with him. in so doing, tom cotton has accomplished something that pretty recently would have seemed impossible. he s gotten everybody in congress to start fighting with each other over their previously consensus approach to iran. democrats denounced the tom cotton letter but beyond that they all united in opposition to it. even the democrats who have been most aggressively hawkish on iran are against tom cotton on this, and suddenly one of th
was building out from the middle and all of a sudden it got blown up. i mean, this is if this isn t an example of snatching victory from the defeat from the jaws of victory, i ve never seen it. it s a very strange turn of events. i m glad you they have politicized, they have politicized and made partisan an issue that was never partisan before. i wanted i m glad you brought up senator corker there because that last point is exactly what i was going to ask you about. senator corker, as far as i understand, is one of the republicans who did not sign on to senator cotton s letter today. it s got unanimous democratic opposition. it split the republican senators including senator corker and his incredibly key position on this. i wonder if you see this as sort of a fluke occurrence or does this imply that there are sort of fishers in the senate in terms of people trying to take a leadership role in this where we shouldn t really feel like we can predict what s going to happen n