Trump Moves Marines to Middle East, Schiff Raises Alarm

Joining us now, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California. He's a member of the Judiciary Committee. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. Let's start actually with the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian Navy certainly has been taking some major hits in the first two weeks of war.

But as experts have told us, it doesn't take much to really menace ships going through that narrow strait with which 20% of the world's oil passes. It can be drones. It can be speed boats. Guy with a rocket launcher can raise real havoc and fears. So we've now heard the president over the weekend

in a series of, I'd argue, increasingly desperate calls for action, asking for allies to help the US military do this. But that's a tough ask to make when you've spent most of the last year bashing those same allies.

That's exactly right, and I think this reflects the lack of broader planning for this war. You bash our NATO allies, and then when you need them, they're reluctant to get involved, particularly if they're not brought into the war plan to begin with.

But the fact that the administration really didn't foresee the asymmetric nature of the threat to the strait is telling also. As you say it's very easy for the Iranians to plant a few mines or use small inexpensive projectiles to really threaten traffic in the strait, causing tankers not to want to pass through it, not to want to take that risk. Defending against that is hugely expensive.

The US, I don't think, has the capability at this point of escorting every ship that goes through. That would be a massive undertaking. Even the Secretary of Energy acknowledges they wouldn't be ready to do anything like that for weeks. And the president has said he wants the war over by then.

It just seems like they didn't anticipate what Iran might do when this was eminently foreseeable.

Yeah, we'll have in just a moment, get into some new reporting about what the president was briefed in terms of the Strait of Hormuz ahead of the conflict. As senator, let's talk about the price here at home right now. And that is literal in terms of gas prices in particular but there is some belief that's gonna start spilling over those cost hikes gonna spill over into other areas soon food we're seeing airfares already other areas could start see some hikes but also we have lost more than a

dozen Americans already in this conflict and there there is reporting that some military units are heading to the region. Unclear if they'll be deployed, but it does seem like Americans are being made to buy in more and more into this conflict.

I think that's absolutely true. And of course, the heaviest cost is the one you mentioned, that we've lost 13 service members already. I hope that we lose no more. I grieve the fact that we've lost so many already. And it's particularly troubling when there was no imminent

threat to the country. It's one thing if we're attacked. It's another if they're on the precipice of attacking. And it's another thing still if we decide for reasons that are still not clear that we're going to go to war, a war of choice.

In addition to those human costs, you have the immense financial costs. And those take the form of the billions of dollars we've already spent dropping bombs over Iran. But it also is a cost that people are paying at the pump. And people will be increasingly paying at the grocery store.

I said on the Agriculture Committee, a lot of the fertilizer and other inputs to agriculture come through that strait also, which is going to mean farmers are pinched even more and consumers are going to be facing even steeper hikes at the grocery store.

All of this brings into stark relief the fact the president promised to do the exact opposite of what he's doing. He promised to bring down costs. He promised to keep us out of foreign wars. Now he's bringing. He promised to bring down costs. He promised to keep us out of foreign wars.

Now he's bringing us into foreign wars and driving costs up further.

John Heilman, let's bring you in here. I think it is safe to say, as this war enters its third week, it is not going quite as how the president and his team wanted

it to.

There's been unquestionably some real damage that the US military has delivered to Iran and their military and its ability to launch missiles. That said, as we've been chronicling here for the last ten minutes, the Strait of Hormuz largely closed. Gas prices are up here in the United States, probably only going to continue to rise.

And suddenly the president is facing an extremely consequential week in terms of decisions in the Middle East, but also potentially political pain here at home.

Right, Jonathan. And you know, you'll recall that on Friday, Pete Hegseth did a briefing in which he mocked those of us in the media, widespread, for talking about a widening and intensifying conflict in the Gulf and said, you know, this is just all fake news. And all we've seen over the course of the weekend is increasing signs of widening and

intensifying conflict, literally widening as in more countries are being drawn into the war and intensifying as in the Straits of Hormuz continues to be closed and there continue to be Iranian strikes throughout the region that have only further crippled the global energy market. And Senator Schiff, I guess my question to you about this

is we saw a bunch of your colleagues last week come out of briefings with the Pentagon, classified briefings where they couldn't discuss much in detail except to say that they are increasingly concerned that because of the fact that there were no classified briefings where they couldn't discuss

much in detail except to say. That they are increasingly concerned that because. Reopening the straits would require ground forces of some kind that they were

increasingly concerned that that is in fact exactly where we're headed. And I'm wondering number one whether you are concerned on the that's on that same way and whether you see ground troops as, as long as the administration continues its current course, sort of inevitable, but also how the Senate can start to reassert itself

as a counterbalance to the executive branch at a moment when it has been consulted almost as little as American allies. This is a deep concern of mine that you could see Marines inserted to try to

reopen the strait. It may not be possible to fully secure the strait without having boots on the ground, without making sure that Iranians who might be targeting those ships from shore can be taken out by boots on the ground. And that of course introduced a whole new level of risk for the loss of life of US troops, but also the potential that you could have US troops held hostage by the Iranians,

and what a mess that would be. In the reporting about the president being briefed on the fact that Iran might close the strait, I think the president here was the victim of his own success militarily in Venezuela, in thinking this was going to be easy, and the cautions by General Kaine

or others were simply not worth listening to, abiding by. We could overcome them. And that kind of overconfidence, the failure to recognize that in war things are unpredictable, has led us into this increasing quagmire, where we don't have a changed regime,

where we don't have a secure strait, where the cost of fuel and price at the pump is going up. Now in terms of the terms that we have in Congress, or the tools we have, we've been introducing War Powers Resolutions. We're gonna introduce and have introduced more,

and we'll be taking those up I think fairly soon and I expect as this drags on and in particular if they do introduce ground troops those resolutions are going to gain more and more Republican support but at this point we're reliant on Republican members of the Senate to reassert our congressional war power they have thus far refused. I hope that changes, and I hope it changes before we see

further loss of American lives.

So Senator, while we have you with us, we want to get you in on a couple other items, including this recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal written by former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that was headlined, Opposing Trump Isn't a Global Strategy. And it reads in part this way.

Democrats need to realize that foreign policy demands results, not merely rules. Defending the sanctity of the system is different from projecting strength as a virtue. The most important question is whether Mr. Trump's approach advances America's global security and economic

interests. What the American people need to hear from Democrats isn't arguments about the process, but a clear articulation of the strategy we would pursue. For our party, this is a threshold issue. Democrats need to explain how would we use all our foreign policy tools, economic statecraft, military power, political persuasion, and cultural influence to advance our interests and security. That means taking a clear-eyed

view of the challenges we face on the global stage. Americans don't choose presidents to be desk clerks or pencil pushers in the name of international norms. They want leaders they can be confident will secure America's interests. Rahm Emanuel rumored to be considering a presidential run in 2028. So Senator, let's get your thoughts here.

He's basically saying it's not enough just to say no to Trump. And we've had that phenomenon here at home for a while, that the Democrats need to articulate their own vision. But he's saying that needs to apply overseas as well with foreign policy.

How would they do that?

Well, I think he's right. At the same time, we're at war right now. And I think it is important for us to push back on what the president's doing, because it is raising the cost of the American people and putting our soldiers and our Marines now in harm's way.

But more broadly, Democrats have articulated a vision that is a deep contrast to the president. And you know, just using the current situation, Democrats are solidly in support of Ukraine. We want to provide stronger material support for Ukraine. We would not be lifting sanctions on Russia right now, which is just filling the Russian war coffers with more money to make war against Ukraine. We would be seeking Ukraine's help,

participation in countering the Iranian Shahed drones, which they have great experience. That's contrasting with the president denigrating Zelensky, blaming Zelensky for his own actions, for the president's own actions in taking the pressure off Russia.

There are some sharp contrasts that don't involve simply saying we support international institutions, but I would also say that we are very firmly supportive of NATO. We recognize NATO's value. The president does not, and we see with the president's call now on NATO to help bail him out of this problem he's created, the necessity of having strong alliances.

So there are very different foreign policy positions that don't involve simple support for institutions.

And Senator, lastly, you sit on the Agriculture Committee, and certainly California is the heart of much of America's agriculture industry. Well, the Trump administration is saying it now wants to make it easier for migrants

to work on farms in the US after previously targeting them in deportation rates. The New York Times is reporting the administration is working to expand and cheapen the H-2A guest worker visa program by lowering wage requirements and allowing housing to count as compensation

for those workers. The reason? After years of labor shortages in agriculture, the administration's deportation raids and border crackdowns are only making things worse. About 40 percent of crop workers are unauthorized migrants. Last October, the Labor Department revealed in a filing that the near total cessation of unauthorized migration and lack of legal workers is

quote, threatening the stability of domestic food production. So, I mean Senator, I mean, I'll just put that on a T for you. Go ahead.

Farmers are really in a difficult position because in addition to the immigration raids that have discouraged farm workers from showing up at work and leaving fields untended, you also have tariffs which are just crushing farmers. And now you add to it the increased costs,

not only from the tariffs, but from fertilizer not getting through the Strait of Hormuz. It's a perfect storm of awful for farmers. Now, I don't know whether, frankly, to give much credence to the president's now interest in changing or improving or making modifications

to migration policy. Because we've seen this before. In the beginning of this administration, when farmers first raised hell about what the president's policies were doing, you saw the president say, we're going to exclude those who are undocumented

but working on farms. And then you heard pushback from Stephen Miller, and the president did an about face. No, there's no exclusion of those workers. So is this just the latest kind of iteration of the president flip-flopping because he

doesn't know what to do? I will believe it when I see it. But right now, all of this is conspiring to raise the cost of consumers going to the grocery store, in direct violation of what the president promised he would do.

Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California. Senator Schiff, thank you for joining us this morning. Senator Schiff, thank you for joining us this morning.

Thank you.