CNN Newsroom: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is Interviewed about Repealing the AUMF
Interview
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Great to be with you.
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I think we should. This is very typical Russian behavior, and that is to grab Americans, use them as leverage, in this case a reporter, make spurious allegations against them and detain them, you know, potentially for long periods of time. In this case, you know, I think we can see it in concert with their nuclear announcements, the abrogation of their treaty obligations as a way of just ramping up pressure on the west, signaling that Moscow is going to use whatever tools it has, including essentially hostage taking, to try to deter the United States and the west from opposing its ambitions in Ukraine.
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I don't know that I would liken it to the Cold War, but it's certainly a very dangerous period when Putin is essentially rattling the nuclear saber in increasingly dangerous ways by, in this case, and most recently, decided it's not going to provide notification when it does missile tests. Test that, you know, previously it would alert us to, and we would alert them so that we didn't misinterpret something they were doing and end up in an unintended war. So these are dangerous steps.
At the same time, I don't think Putin has any present intention to use nuclear weapons. I think he does intend to use the threat of them to try to get the United States to back off our support of Ukraine. And we simply cannot let that succeed. We have to continue our vigorous support for our Ukrainian allies.
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I think, yes, I think this is finally the time when we can get this done. We can repeal these authorizations that have long outlasted their original purpose.
We still have the hard work to do with the 2001 authorization to narrow its terms and to provide a sunset for that authorization. That is, in many ways, the much heavier lift. But these Iraq resolutions absolutely should be repealed. And I think the time has finally arrived where Congress has the will to get it done.
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It sure darn well better. But what I've experienced, and you're right, I've been pushing for the repeal and the narrowing of these authorizations for years and years.
I pushed for it during Democratic administrations and Republican ones. And I found opposition from Democratic and Republican members to putting constraints on the executive. And also, even during the Obama administration, very limited willingness of that administration to use its muscle, its political muscle, to try to scale back the authorizations Congress had given prior administrations and was giving that one.
So, this is a bipartisan challenge, and we have to make sure that we begin with the easiest step, which is the repeal of the Iraq authorization. And then we narrow the 2001 AUMF and we make sure that subsequent authorization should ever be a necessity much more narrowly drawn.
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Well, it will be a choice between staying the course, assuming that Joe Biden runs for re-election, as I expect that he will, and moving the country forward, or it will be a choice of going tragically, not only backward to the drama and the trauma of a Trump presidency, but I fear far worse.
What we have seen with Donald Trump is, whenever he is allowed to escape accountability, he engages in worse and worse misconduct. Should he be rewarded with another term, he would begin where he left office, and that is begin at the point of a an insurrection. And it would just descend from there. So, I think that would be a catastrophic choice if the country were to even entertain his candidacy. And it is a marvel to me that someone that may be charged with writing hush money checks to a porn star and incite an insurrection is somehow still the leading Republican candidate for president. How is that even possible?
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Thank you.
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