A panel discussion on MS NOW’s “The Weekend: Primetime” went off the rails on Sunday night after a MAGA Republican defended President Donald Trump’s latest “war.”
Early Saturday morning, Trump posted a nearly eight-minute video on Truth Social where he announced the U.S. and Israel would conduct coordinated strikes against several sites in Iran, an operation known as “Epic Fury” that resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the brutal dictator who had ruled the country since 1989. In the video, Trump referred to the operation as a “war” even though Congress has not passed an official declaration of war.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) argued on Sunday that Trump’s authority to authorize the strikes rests on his Article II powers, which define the presidency and outline executive authority.
She also appeared to reference a 2024 report that Iran had attempted to assassinate Trump in her justification, an assertion that the other panelists pounced on.
“So, Congresswoman, are you saying that it went into the decision to invade Iran, to attack Iran, to decapitate their leadership, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump?” MS NOW host Elise Jordan asked, adding that it made it seem like a “personal” matter for the president.
Luna also argued that the strikes on Iran did not amount to a war, and therefore, the president did not need Congressional approval to authorize the operation.
“I just talked to the Secretary of State [Marco Rubio],” she said. “Strategic strikes are not [a] war.”
The panel got heated when host Ayman Mohyeldin pressed Luna to provide an example of when Iranian terrorists killed American citizens on American soil.
The crosstalk led Mohyeldin to tell Luna that she didn’t “have a good grasp” of the facts in Iran.
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