Rep Meeks Breaks Down How House Dems Are Working to End Ukraine and Iran Wars

18 Republicans joined House Democrats to pass a bill that would send additional military aid to Ukraine. So talking, joining me to talk about this is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks. Congressman, nice to see you. Good to see you. I invited you on the show because I keep running into you in the streets of New York, so I thought I was going to be here with you in person. Let me talk about Ukraine. There was a moment, and this was before Donald Trump, there was a moment when support for Ukraine had all but one vote in the United States Congress. This was about as bipartisan an issue as you can get, and it sort of eroded under Donald Trump and his sort of way of looking at Ukraine and telling them they don't have all the cards and trying to cut deals and saying he could end the war on day one. What's happened? I mean, you finally got 18 Republicans to vote with you, but what's happened that Democrats have to lead this charge to protect an allied country against an adversary? Because the Republican Party has become the party of Trump. It's no longer the Republican Party, by and large, overwhelmingly. It's the party of Donald Trump. And we see Donald Trump tries to take retribution on various members when he does not, when they do not do what he asked them to do. We see that continuously. You know, he still has his way of being vindictive in that regard. So it did take some brave Republicans to stand up to finally pass this vote with reference to Ukraine. You know, I also think that Donald Trump has this unique relationship with dictators, particularly Vladimir Putin. We've seen that from the first Trump administration, where he was accepting Putin's and Russia's intelligence over the United States intelligence. We've seen that where he has treated Putin, welcomed him in Alaska on red carpet, and berated Zelensky in the White House. We've seen it when he says Putin should do anything he wants, and we've seen it when he said that Ukraine doesn't have the cards. Well, Ukraine has been stepping up themselves with their own ingenuity, and the European countries have been stepping up. And though Putin continues to bomb, they and Ukraine are fighting back. And if we just do our part, they can win, which will shorten this war, which will help bring prices down for here in America also. Yeah. Let's talk about the other war. Somebody asked me last night, what does this mean? What does it mean that they passed a war powers resolution? Does that does that do anything? Because Donald Trump said it doesn't mean anything to him. Well, Donald Trump doesn't like to abide by the law, we know. But it is a privileged, privileged resolution, which means it can be brought up automatically in the Senate. But I'm going to let the Senate decide that. And we want to try to get the Senate to pass the same resolution. Because once we pass that, then it's a concurrent resolution, which does not go to the president. He cannot veto it. It becomes the law. That's based upon the War Powers Act, where the equal but separate branch of government, the only branch of government that is given the right by the Constitution to declare war. And so this is a step in the direction of allowing the American people's voices to be heard because they know that Donald Trump's war of choice is costing them at the gas pump, is costing them at the grocery stores, it's costing them in deaths of our soldiers and putting them in the way. And it's not it's not going to close the Strait of Hormuz. So the war has to stop. So this is the first step. And we've got to continue to move forward so that Donald Trump cannot continue his war of choice, where he had no plan, no way, no talking about ending, did not work with any of our allies or our friends. That's why they're not there now. And we're going to have to have to go can't bomb our way out. So he's put us in a weaker position, even as far as negotiations are concerned. And remember, he's the one that ripped up the JCPOA that Barack Obama had put in that and now he's worried about. We're dealing with all the things that he wanted dealt with. It actually had all the answers that he wanted dealt with. Congressman, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us. Congressman Gregory Meeks. Good to be with you.