00:02:03.000On Human Events Daily, we've spent all week saying that we expect strikes on Iran this weekend.
00:02:09.000We said all the indications and warnings are there.
00:02:12.000You saw these amassed forces of naval combat power that were sent to the Gulf, that were sent to the East Med,
00:02:20.000the Lincoln, and then, of course, the Ford arriving just a couple of days ago.
00:02:25.000And so with that in place, plus the massive amount of air power that the U.S.,
00:02:30.000as well as the refuelers sent over to the Middle East, to the region, Saudi Arabia, Israel operating off of these airways and runways,
00:02:37.000we know that these were not sent over for negotiations.
00:02:42.000These were all the indications and warnings.
00:02:44.000We heard the signal out of the White House as well that strikes were imminent.
00:02:48.000I think, for me, one of the one of the top indicators was the deployment of almost the entire fifth fleet out of Bahrain there in the Gulf,
00:02:56.000adjacent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, them departing port.
00:02:59.000That, of course, was done in terms of a classic defensive dispersal movement in preparation for retaliatory strikes from Iran.
00:03:08.000Those strikes have come in the face of these initial strikes from the United States.
00:03:13.000So, you know, we went in and we explained how all of this was marching towards the United States was clearly marching towards military action in Iran all week.
00:03:22.000And that, of course, is what we saw. And we put up potential strike packages that we could see for the United States.
00:03:29.000It does appear that the U.S. at this point where we're told that these strikes were conducted using Tomahawk land attack missiles.
00:03:36.000Those, of course, fired from destroyers. It does.
00:03:39.000It appears that the F-22s were used for suppression of enemy air defense.
00:03:44.000We know those air defense assets were targeted. We know that military anti-air missiles were struck.
00:03:51.000We know the ballistic missiles were struck. We're told the IRGC command posts.
00:03:55.000This is Iranians Revolutionary Guard Corps and particularly their naval ports and their naval hubs were hit.
00:04:01.000Chabahar, Bandar Abbas and other areas along the Gulf, because, of course, the president and the White House understand the IRGC's initial goal in terms of all this.
00:04:12.000One of their initial most deadly courses of action would be closing the Strait of Hormuz to be able to inflict massive economic chaos on the entire world.
00:04:21.000That being the key naval choke point for all of the oil, the petroleum, liquid natural gas coming out of the Gulf.
00:04:28.000And so we see those strikes from the United States on the Israeli side.
00:04:33.000It does appear that the that the Israelis were targeting leadership again remains to be seen.
00:04:38.000And I would say, as always, truth is the first casualty in war.
00:04:42.000So some of these initial reports we do need to be circumspect.
00:04:45.000We do need to wait for full confirmation from the Department of War, from folks on the ground who are giving us direct reporting about what exactly was hit, what the battle damage assessment is, what capabilities these sites, these facilities have leadership.
00:05:01.000If any leadership was taken out, whether or not that's actually confirmed by both sides.
00:05:06.000So, again, we need to be careful when it comes to that.
00:05:09.000But I will say this in terms of strategy appears that these strikes, the strike package operation at Epic Fury, which the president has launched in the early hours of this Saturday morning here.
00:05:23.000This is not going to be one round of strikes.
00:05:26.000This is going to be days, not hours, is what we're being told.
00:05:30.000I've dubbed it the escalate to deescalate strategy where President Trump is going to run a series of strikes.
00:05:37.000Israel is going to run a series of strikes.
00:05:39.000You may see that over the course of one to two days, then wait to respond to the Iranian strikes.
00:05:44.000At that point, pause, assess for battle damage, assess for whether or not they're seeing signals from the regime cracking and being willing to make this deal or potentially even regime collapse.
00:05:55.000As the president himself said in his historic address that he announced and released in the early hours of this morning calling for the Iranian people to rise up.
00:06:05.000So, Steve, that's where things stand right now.
00:06:08.000We're also, of course, seeing Iran retaliating with strikes on U.S. naval bases, U.S. military installations all across the Gulf.
00:06:15.000We're even seeing Iran target Jebel Ali, the port of Dubai.
00:06:20.000That was that missile was intercepted.
00:06:22.000But again, Iran really looking to inflict that economic damage, that economic pain on the United States, our Gulf partners, Israel.
00:06:31.000And of course, the regime knows that they are in survival mode right now in Tehran.
00:06:37.000That's I mean, and we have Brandon Reichert and Captain Fennell, who I think were very consistent over the last couple of weeks.
00:06:45.000Both of these individuals were saying, hey, look, these negotiations, if something was happening, it'd be great.
00:06:51.000But these negotiations, President Trump is really waiting to get all the assets in place.
00:06:56.000And once he gets the assets in place, the party's on in President Trump's address.
00:07:00.000And we're going to break that down and play it in pieces so people can see it.
00:07:03.000We've had this theory that if he's not going to get tapped along in these negotiations.
00:07:10.000Now, the Oman mediator, let's call him that, flew from Geneva to Washington, actually went to the White House.
00:07:17.000I believe he met with the vice president to talk about how he thought there were big breakthroughs coming from the Persians.
00:07:23.000He then gave an interview on CBS saying he thought there were breakthroughs.
00:07:43.000I think it's deeper than that because he's essentially calling for the Iranian people to rise up and use these strikes as a almost, if not total decapitation strike, a limited decapitation strike to call for the Iranian people to rise up and have regime change.
00:08:00.000Well, Steve, that's that's what the president said himself.
00:08:03.000He said he he did not talk only about or particularly about the nuclear program in his speech.
00:08:10.000He talked about 47 years that he called chaos of the Iranian revolutionary regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran since the takeover in 1979.
00:08:22.000He talked about the attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq when that was ongoing and how Iran and Iranian proxies, Shia proxies and militias were behind so many of those attacks.
00:08:32.000And he talked about how he perceived Iran as a great threat to the region, a great threat to stability.
00:08:39.000And he responded by saying that now is the time for the Iranian people to rise up.
00:08:45.000So, you know, what we're not seeing, I would say, in contrast with 2003 and the Bush strategy or or Afghanistan 2001, we're not seeing boots on the ground.
00:09:04.000We're seeing naval power, but we're not seeing boots on the ground.
00:09:08.000That being said, President Trump clearly calling for the Iranian people to take aim at the Iranian regime and has targeted the U.S. military as such as well.
00:09:28.000It's insertion of any either special forces and or ground troops.
00:09:33.000But he's calling for the Iranian people to take it in their own hands like a couple of weeks ago when when Scott Besson had broken with breaking the currency they took to the streets.
00:09:43.000He's calling for the Iranian people to do the regime change.
00:09:45.000He'll it looks like we'll go in and try to do as much decapitation as possible.
00:09:53.000And I certainly wouldn't preclude the option of a commando force.
00:09:57.000We saw the Maduro raid not long ago, also conducted on a weekend similar to this.
00:10:01.000And so I wouldn't preclude the president.
00:10:04.000He certainly has that option to call up special forces, tier one operators.
00:10:08.000This is what they do, whether it's Delta, whether it's heel team six, to be able to go in and target either leadership or target these weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, either either these enriched uranium sites or anything that's still available.
00:10:22.000Anything that they deem as either NBC, nuclear, biological, chemical, any of those potential sites or research sites that they could be looking at within the regime.
00:10:31.000Certainly, Israel has conducted commando raids within Iran in the past, has used leave behind assets, deep insertion of Mastad units, IDF special forces as well.
00:10:41.000So we could be seeing that type of activity.
00:10:43.000I would say pretty much everything's on the table.
00:10:45.000And I would also point out that these initial strikes could even just be shaping operations for larger strikes that are still yet to come, B2s or others that the president, if he chooses, could send into battle.
00:11:01.000Now, we don't have reports of in the June, in the 12 day war, the initial strike on that Thursday night, Friday morning, all throughout that Saturday.
00:11:12.000It was obvious that there were insertion on Mossad.
00:11:15.000They actually took out certain members of the of the Revolutionary Guard, other senior commanders.
00:11:22.000That was a that looked like a regime change strike at the time, as we were the first to bring up here on on War Room when we were covering it.
00:11:30.000It has been any indication of all they've had that type of infiltration in the type of, you know, kind of the tactics that Mossad used the first time to take out individuals that they had targeted that were senior members of command and control.
00:11:45.000Well, Steve, at this point, I would say it's too early to tell or perhaps just too early to confirm.
00:11:51.000We're seeing rumors that members of IRGC leadership are taken out.
00:11:56.000There's a rumor spreading across social media.
00:11:58.000Some people say the Ayatollah was taken out.
00:12:00.000Some people say that he was secured in another location.
00:12:03.000Again, this is this is the fog of war and we are in the fog of war.
00:12:10.000So my recommendation to everyone that is stay frosty.
00:12:13.000Although, of course, we know going from the 12 day war back last June, that is certainly the MO of Mossad.
00:12:20.000That is certainly the MO of IDF and working with those partners in a coalition force as the United States did at that time.
00:12:28.000It would not surprise me at all if those commando units or in those types of raids were used.
00:12:34.000We're also hearing, by the way, reports that the United States for the first time ever used one way attack drones or kamikaze drones.
00:12:41.000These, of course, are ubiquitous on both sides of the Ukrainian conflict now being used by the United States, according to reports in the first ever time for combat operations.
00:13:21.000Why early on a Saturday morning on the last day of February in the year of our Lord, 2026, sir?
00:13:27.000Well, Steve, of course, the president operates on the president's time.
00:13:31.000And clearly, just from an operational standpoint, what they were waiting for was for the Ford to arrive off the coast of Haifa, which is the port of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem area there in the eastern Mediterranean.
00:13:44.000It was very obvious that that's exactly the moment that they were waiting for.
00:13:48.000And we were tracking the USS Ford as it crossed through the Strait of Gibraltar, as it was crossing through the East Med.
00:13:55.000President Trump, I think, you know, just having spent time with him on Air Force One last week, he repeatedly brought up those protests in the streets of Tehran.
00:14:04.000He said over and over, it looks like the people are ready to rise up, but perhaps they just need a little push.
00:14:10.000You know, they need a little pressure on the regime.
00:14:13.000We know that the economic forces, the currency, the sanctions that Secretary Besson and other countries have put on Iran have really broken the economy,
00:14:22.000broken the currency in Iran that's leading to a lot of the economic pressure that's causing some of these protests.
00:14:28.000And it appears that President Trump thought that this was the right time to pull the trigger.
00:14:32.000Jack, social media, until we get you back in the war room, where do people follow you, sir?
00:14:38.000We're going to be up at Jack Posobiec and, of course, Human Events for All Breaking.
00:14:51.000We've got Fennell, Faddis, Weikert, Thayer, and much, much more in the war room.
00:14:57.000The world is getting more unstable and chaotic every day.
00:15:04.000It seems like everywhere you look, there's another crisis, another controversy, another conflict, or just outright catastrophe.
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00:17:51.000Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq.
00:17:56.000The regime's proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years,
00:18:05.000as well as U.S. naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lands.
00:18:11.000It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.
00:18:16.000This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces.
00:18:24.000I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration, and there is no military on Earth even close to its power, strength, or sophistication.
00:18:36.000My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region.
00:18:43.000Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill.
00:18:51.000The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties that often happens in war.
00:19:02.000We're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.
00:19:06.000We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.
00:19:17.000We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.
00:19:28.000We have the greatest in the world, and they will prevail.
00:19:32.000To the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or, in the alternative, face certain death.
00:21:14.000Number one, the White House, I believe, just came out and said the president will all rumors and discussion of the president addressing the nation today are inaccurate.
00:21:52.000President Trump went back to the Marine barracks, went back to the USS Cole.
00:21:57.000Your assessment of what the president just said, sir, and also you talked about the naval assets, the airstrikes, et cetera.
00:22:05.000What's your assessment of this, at least the initial strike package?
00:22:11.000Well, Steve, it's a really serious time in our history and the history of the region.
00:22:17.000I say that it's a result of 47 years of inaction by previous administrations.
00:22:24.000And so the political side you said we won't talk to today, but it's you are seeing what military planners inside the Pentagon have been looking at for 47 years, a culmination of examination and looking at targets across Iran.
00:22:39.000And the president, in his statement today, said they were going to destroy missiles and the missile industry, annihilate the Navy, stop terrorism, which means stop the leadership of Iran, both the government leaders, the Mullahs, the IRGC, which is their Revolutionary Guard Corps military, and then their regular military.
00:23:02.000And again, he talked about the leadership.
00:23:05.000So those are the basic great categories.
00:23:09.000Then you have the targeting that's been done.
00:23:11.000And we don't know the extent of how many targets were struck.
00:23:14.000I would guess something of over a thousand or more targets were identified, probably closer to 2,000, given the scope of how big Iran's country is, the size of their military and these general categories.
00:23:33.000There's obviously, I would say the Iranian regime is in a state of shock in terms of their ability to assess what's been hit.
00:23:41.000So we don't have all the details of all the results of the T-LAM strikes that went against all these assets and targets in Iran.
00:23:49.000On the naval side, I think it's really interesting, and I think the USS Abraham Lincoln was probably the lead on the naval portion of this strike, whereas the Ford and the other ground-based air assets that we have in the region were probably conducting more strikes deeper into Iran.
00:24:07.000In fact, the Ford is actually closer to Tehran than probably the Lincoln was.
00:24:12.000In terms of the naval, we should not forget that in 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts was struck by an Iranian mine during Operation Praying Mantis.
00:24:22.000And then three years later, in 1991, the USS Tripoli and the USS Princeton were both struck by mine.
00:24:29.000So as the president said, Iran has been terrorizing the region and killing people for a long time.
00:24:36.000And this is what the attacks are going after, to make sure to defend their ability to reach out and disrupt international shipping or airspace.
00:24:46.000I want to get Brandon in on this thing, but real quickly, just to make sure people understand.
00:24:50.000You're saying the Ford, which is in the eastern Mediterranean, probably had more impact on this than the Lincoln that's in the North Arabian Sea?
00:24:59.000In terms of attacking ground targets, we don't know what naval targets were struck.
00:25:04.000We haven't had any reporting out of what happened in Bandar Abbas and Karg Island, the naval platforms themselves.
00:25:10.000Where is the Iranian Navy? I would expect that much of the Iranian Navy is either below the sea and sunk or is inoperable or isolated because of the Lincoln and that array of naval armada that's there.
00:25:24.000And it's not just surface ships. It's not just the aircraft carriers. It's also the submarines.
00:25:29.000And one last point, Jack mentioned, is this issue with what can we do in terms of special operations.
00:25:35.000We shouldn't forget that there is Expeditionary Mobile Base or ESB-3, the Chesty Puller, is in the Gulf of Oman or in those waters south of Iran.
00:25:46.000And they have the capacity to bring special operation forces in to do special operations like we saw in Absolute Resolve in Venezuela.
00:25:55.000We have all the assets in the area that we need to be able to continuously pound the targets that we know that we need to get after to defang Tehran.
00:26:06.000Hang on one second. I've got to get Brandon in here in this segment. Just hang on, Captain. We're going to get back to you. Stay right there.
00:26:13.000Brandon Weikert, you called this just like Captain Fennell. He said, hey, they're negotiating to negotiate.
00:26:19.000If anything pops, it'll be interesting. But he's waiting until he gets his assets in place and then he's going to hit.
00:26:24.000Your assessment now, sir, that it looks like that's what happened.
00:26:28.000That's exactly what happened. And I don't take any pleasure in saying that, but it is here now.
00:26:33.600And it was an excellent assessment by both Captain Fennell and Jack. So well done. Thank you.
00:26:38.740But I think we need to also confirm something. I have been told that the Wall Street Journal report is correct, that they have killed at least two IRGC commanders.
00:26:48.520I have also been told that there is some concern now that the Houthis are getting ready to launch long-range strikes against Israel.
00:27:00.180I would like to note that so far, according to my guys in the UAE, the American air defense or the air defense systems in the region have so far held up,
00:27:11.560which is something I did not think would be possible, which either indicates to me that the Americans and Israelis were more effective in knocking out those missile launchers than I thought they would be,
00:27:21.000or the Iranians are still trying to organize an effective counterpunch.
00:27:25.340But I think that's some good news this morning. And also, it looks a lot like, according to Bloomberg two hours ago, and I think this was going to happen anyway,
00:27:35.220the oil companies are now redirecting the flow of oil away from the Strait of Hormuz to other areas because the Houthis are already starting to impose their blockade again of the Red Sea.
00:27:49.900So, to me, it looks like the first strike packages of the United States and Israel have been relatively effective.
00:27:59.440The Iranians have countered, although I am not convinced that the Iranians have gotten a kill shot in yet, which is good for us.
00:28:07.700Yeah. Brandon, hang on for a second. Yeah, it looks like there was a counter-strike, but maybe not totally coordinated or even able to pull off.
00:28:15.160Okay, short commercial break. You're in the war room. Faddis, Eric Prince, Joe Allen, Weikert, Fennell, only all-stars this morning.
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00:29:59.220Okay, we're going to get to every aspect of this. Already looks like it may be, this may be expanding regionally as everybody thought it would.
00:30:11.580And Brandon Weikert's here, Fennell Fettis. We've got everybody. Thayer, Mike Davis is going to come in about the authorization the president's going to use.
00:30:20.120Let me play, I'm going to play a clip now from CBS News.
00:30:23.860What you're going to hear is the Oman, let's say he's the mediator.
00:30:27.260He was the note passer that even Trista Farsi said that the Persians, the Iranians had to get in direct discussions with President Trump.
00:30:36.760He wasn't going to get tapped along. He actually left Geneva.
00:30:40.580They're supposed to be in Vienna Monday for another follow-on meeting.
00:30:44.580He left Geneva, flew to the United States, think and went to the White House.
00:30:47.060Let's hear him. I'm bringing Brandon Weikert for his response.
00:32:09.620It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant because now we are talking about zero stockpiling.
00:32:19.580And that is very, very important because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb.
00:32:28.740Okay, that's the Amman mediator, the kind of go-between that everybody realizes you can't have these go-bequings.
00:32:35.320If you're not going to have direct negotiations, President Trump's going to get tired of that quickly.
00:32:40.800Brandon Weikert, your comments and observations, you're saying the whole time, hey, look, that's fine if something happened.
00:32:47.680But the president clearly, in that message early this morning, is not simply talking about a nuclear weapon anymore.
00:32:54.880He's talking about something much more fundamental, sir.
00:32:58.600And I, yeah, this was something I might have said to Kurt Mills or you, I can't remember in the weeks ago.
00:33:03.000I was saying that it really isn't about nuclear weapons anymore.
00:33:05.860This is really a joint U.S.-Israeli issue and therefore the Israelis are going to have veto power as much as the Americans are when it comes to negotiations.
00:33:17.260And for the Israelis, it's never been just the nukes.
00:33:20.060It's really been the ballistic missile and hypersonic weapon threat that Iran poses.
00:33:24.280And in order to get the Iranians to agree to no enrichment that the Omani was referring to, Trump basically had to verbally say, okay, I'll drop the ballistic missile reduction issue.
00:33:36.920And there's no way that the Israelis are then going to come on board with that.
00:33:40.160And that's the issue right now because this is not just about America and Iran.
00:33:44.240Unfortunately, it's also about Israel now.
00:33:46.860So that's why I was saying that this was all sort of spoken here.
00:33:50.540But even with the ballistic missile, this is what I want to get to, what the president said today is this is, he wants, he's calling for the people to rise up in the streets and take their, this is a regime change, is it not?
00:34:03.340He's not saying he's going to put boots on the ground, but he's implying I'm going to do what I got to do and you take it from there.
00:34:09.440And in fact, the police, remember there's a massive army besides the Revolutionary Guard.
00:34:13.980Revolutionary Guard is obviously the layer on top that controls things, but he's telling police, he's telling law enforcement, he's telling the army, if you put down your weapons or if you turn against the regime, there will be no implications against you.
00:34:30.880If you don't do that, you're all going to die.
00:34:33.380I mean, he couldn't be more blunt about that.
00:34:34.880So this was not, at least what the president said.
00:34:37.120It was never about the military, right?
00:34:38.840It was always about, and he said, I told you this a few, a few weeks ago when he's been pulled in by the protesters.
00:34:44.700He's, you know, he has heart and he wants to support people he thinks are in need.
00:34:48.940And I think this is his sort of his belief that we need to do this.
00:34:53.080And, uh, you know, I will see if it works out, but it is interesting to me because you mentioned shaping operations earlier and you mentioned boots on the ground.
00:35:01.520I'll just say that since last year's 12 day war, I know for a fact that Israeli intelligence has infiltrated and has stayed infiltrated in Iran.
00:35:10.620I suspect that might be why we're having these very effective target hits in Iran.
00:35:15.900You said something that's going to, it's made our audience's head blow up.
00:35:24.800Unfortunately, unfortunately, this is not just an American operation.
00:35:28.220Trump is partnered, you know, for better or worse.
00:35:31.000Trump is partnered with Netanyahu and he is clearly doing this in part because the Israelis want this done.
00:35:39.620Uh, and, uh, I, you know, we don't want to get too political here and I'm not going to dive into the, that, that cesspool, but ultimately I've always said it was a mistake not to put America first.
00:35:49.080And, uh, let's just hope that the military operation continues to be successful, uh, because this is not just for America that we're doing this clearly.
00:36:14.860I do think that there are a few tiny differences between the way the administration dealt with Congress, uh, before the Venezuela operation.
00:36:22.320And before this Iranian operation, before Venezuela, the administration didn't do much outreach to the members that you would typically see an administration do outreach to.
00:36:31.800In this instance, my sources tell me and my colleague, Julia Jester, that secretary of state, Marco Rubio actually did do his best to reach out to all members of the gang of eight.
00:36:41.260That's the top four congressional leaders from both parties.
00:36:44.720And then of course, members of the Senate intelligence committee from both parties.
00:36:50.580He wasn't able to get in touch with all of them because some of them were traveling, not able to pick up the phone.
00:36:55.720But I do think that that is one key difference.
00:36:57.940Of course, it does not explain away the fact that if Trump is calling it a war and warning of American casualties, he did not do this through congressional authorization.
00:37:07.580But I think there's something the administration is going to lean on in the coming days here, because a U.S.
00:37:12.660official is telling MS now that Rubio during that briefing on Tuesday that he did with the gang of eight before Trump's State of the Union, the U.S.
00:37:20.540official is saying that Rubio consulted with congressional leaders during that.
00:37:24.400Speaker Mike Johnson put out a statement this morning where he said that Rubio during that gang of eight briefing on Tuesday said that strikes might be needed or imminent to protect American assets in the region.
00:37:34.780I think all of that is going to suddenly become very important.
00:37:37.960It was definitely important before, but now in light of who's authorizing what and on what legal grounds the administration is acting, it's going to be key because coming out of that briefing, Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries had a lot of questions and they were not supportive of what the administration was telling them.
00:37:54.960And certainly that's going to be important as the administration might maybe try to argue, well, we consulted with members of Congress, certainly members of Congress have not voted on any of this.
00:38:04.980And that's key. But I think we're watching these fault lines begin to emerge as we start questioning what happened here, under what authorization and importantly, what might come next?
00:38:14.700Okay, Mike, you've been one of the leaders in this in this thinking of the of the Article Two powers of the president, particularly his Article Two powers as commander in chief.
00:38:24.480You're one of the one of the biggest advocates of the of using the Aliens Sedition Act from what, 1798, about the situation with Venezuela and Trinidad, Iraq and the invasion of our country.
00:38:35.440You also were around during the Bush years. This just technically walk me through.
00:38:41.500We still have this what military authorization use. That's from 2001, I think, is what the kind of the legal documentation that has been used to do various military operations.
00:38:52.160So just give us the range of what's out there. Your interpretation now of his Article Two powers.
00:38:57.940They've already had a gang of a briefing. Once again, the administration is saying that Ruby has got the lead on this.
00:39:03.280Where do we stand with actually the technical, technically how the commander in chief can do this, sir?
00:39:10.560Under Article One of the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war.
00:39:17.600And there's a difference between declaring war and making war.
00:39:21.800Under Article Two, the president of the United States is the commander in chief.
00:39:27.720And going all the way back to the Federalist Papers, our founders all agreed that the president has the inherent power to repel an invasion or an imminent attack on the United States.
00:39:42.680We have not had a declaration of war since World War Two.
00:39:49.500In 1973, Congress passed over President Nixon's veto.
00:39:58.920They overrode the veto, and they passed the War Powers Act of 1973.
00:40:05.080That's been on the book for over 50 years.
00:40:08.420The problem for that statute is no president, Democrat or Republican, has ceded its constitutionality.
00:40:17.540Every president has said the War Powers Act of 1973 is not constitutional, and no president has complied with the War Powers Act of 1973.
00:40:28.600Any court that has addressed this issue when people have sued the president to try to stop, for example, President Obama's attack on Libya,
00:40:40.480the courts have said that these are political questions that the courts will not decide.
00:40:47.080Meaning these are questions for the political branches, for the Congress, and for the president to fight it out, to figure out who has the power and who does not.