‘Last thing we want to do’: Sarah Sanders condemns Democratic war powers resolution

“They can’t seem to manage to get much of anything done,” she said. “I think the last thing we want to do is push powers into Congress’s hands and take them away from the president.”

The House of Representatives is expected to vote Thursday on a new war powers resolution following what Trump’s critics describe as an inadequate justification for the killing of a top Iranian general by U.S. forces last week.

The resolution would force Trump to obtain congressional approval before engaging in any military operations that would escalate violent conflict with Iran. The Trump administration says it was acting on “very major” intelligence proving Gen. Qassem Soleimani was plotting to kill Americans in the region.

Trump said Thursday that Soleimani was planning on bombing a U.S. Embassy in the Middle East.

Democrats, meanwhile, have contended that even with Soleimani dead, Iran still poses a threat to American interests through proxy war cybersecurity attacks.

“I wouldn’t rest easy that the threat is somehow contained, and that’s the end of it,” Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said Wednesday.

The decision to take out Soleimani, made by Trump, sparked intense partisan backlash and led some Democrats to warn Trump was needlessly bringing the United States to the brink of a ground war in the Middle East.

Some even suggested he had attacked a foreign leader to distract from his impeachment by the House.

Defenders of Trump, such as Sanders, have applauded his decision to take out Soleimani, an officially designated terrorist by the last three presidential administrations, as a “decisive” one that saved American lives and sent a strong message to the rest of the world about curbing Iranian aggression in the region.

“Under the Obama administration, they projected weakness,” Sanders said. “President Trump does everything complete opposite of that. He’s finally projecting strength, and he’s letting them know that they will not be pushed around, there is a red line, and if they cross it, he will respond.”

In response to the Soleimani killing, Iran launched a barrage of missile strikes on a pair of U.S. air bases in Iraq on Tuesday.

“Iran appears to be standing down,” Trump said during an address to the nation Wednesday, during which he slammed former President Barack Obama for not being tougher on Iran.

Republicans say the somewhat simmering tensions with Iran show that Trump’s policy of “peace through strength” is working.

“Any Democrat that doesn’t understand that America is safer now that one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world is rotting in hell is completely naive and completely misses what we need to have in a foreign policy,” Sanders said. “The last thing I want to do is see them take power away from President Trump and put it into their own hands. I don’t think anything could be worse for America than that.”