Under pressure from Trump on war powers, Republicans fold and try to appease White House

On Tuesday, Congress did something it had never done before: It approved a war powers resolution that rebuked Donald Trump and called on the president to end the war in Iran.

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It was a largely symbolic move — the measure had no formal force of law — but as Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted in a statement, “This marks the first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution directing a sitting president to end a military conflict.”

White House officials quickly downplayed the significance of the developments, but Trump clearly took the matter seriously. Not only did the president complain via social media about the “Republican Losers [who] voted with the Dumocrats,” but when he met with GOP senators behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon, he continued to complain about the vote.

MS NOW reported that Trump specifically went after Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick for having missed the vote, despite the fact that his absence wouldn’t have changed the outcome, and that the senator missed the vote because he was with Trump at a rally in his home state at the time.

Hours after Senate Republicans heard from the president, they took fresh steps to try to appease him. MS NOW’s Jack Fitzpatrick reported:

A procedural vote on an Iran war powers resolution failed at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, as two Republicans changed their position after yesterday’s confrontation with Trump.

The vote was 50-47, with one member, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voting present. Paul has voted for every war powers resolution since the Iran war began. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., voted against the motion along with most other Republicans. Those two members had supported the House-approved concurrent resolution that the Senate adopted on Tuesday.

GOP leaders specifically held the vote, knowing it would fail, in order to make Trump feel better.