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Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says President Trump’s deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is more of a win for Tehran than for the United States, panning it as “the art of the surrender,” a jab at Trump’s view of himself as an expert dealmaker.
“Look, this is not the art of the deal. This is the art of surrender. It’s not peace through strength. It’s payoffs through weakness. It’s the worst—this is one of the worst foreign policy disasters that has ever happened in America,” Schumer told MS NOW’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.”
Schumer’s comments took a shot at Trump’s 1987 book, written with journalist Tony Schwartz: “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” which became a New York Times best seller.
The Democratic leader argued that Trump has spent tens of billions of dollars on a war that has resulted in 13 Americans killed and hurt the U.S. economy by causing gas prices to rise by more than $1.50 a gallon since the president first launched strikes on Feb. 28.
“He has no plan. He has no goal. He has no endgame. So now we have 13 Americans dead. We have hundreds more wounded. We have oil prices at four dollars. We have a strengthened Iran and the world is laughing at America because of what Donald Trump has done,” Schumer said.
He blamed Senate Republicans for not standing up to Trump when they had the chance to vote against the war.
“We gave them eight times to vote against this damn war. We told them over and over again. It was clear that he had no goals, he had no plans, that we were going to be worse off after the war than before, which we are. The Strait of Hormuz, Iran has more control,” Schumer said.
“The leadership of Iran is worse. Americans are paying $4 for gasoline. It was obvious. And they were so afraid of Trump that they refused. They could have joined us in a War Resolution, and we could have actually stopped this damn war,” he said.
Libertarian-leaning conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) initially was the only Senate Republican to vote for a Democratic-sponsored war resolution directing Trump to withdraw U.S. troops from hostilities against Iran unless Congress authorizes the conflict.
The number of Republicans who voted for the Iran resolution has steadily grown to four: Paul and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.).
The war powers resolution needs a simple majority to pass the Senate but Trump could veto it.
Trump told Axios’s Marc Caputo in an interview Thursday that the memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz represented an “unconditional surrender” by Iran.
“We defeated them totally militarily,” Trump said.
When Caputo said the deal doesn’t look like unconditional surrender, Trump responded: “Well, it really probably is unconditional surrender.”
Schumer noted that Iran will receive an economic windfall from the deal, including the immediate lifting of sanctions on its oil exports and the unfreezing of its assets around the world.
He said leaders in Tehran would use that money to further oppress its people, who protested in the streets against the authoritarian regime earlier this year. The theocratic regime quelled the dissent with a violent crackdown in which thousands of protesters died.
“We’re giving them money so they can oppress you further. I mean, it’s amazing. Just unbelievable. I have never seen such a disaster. And it was predictable. But the problem was that none of the Republicans, those Republicans, who are now running away from your cameras, refused to join us,” Schumer said.
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