Sen. John Fetterman criticized fellow Democrats who’ve called to impeach President Donald Trump for striking Iran.
“He’s been impeached twice, and now he’s still our president,” Fetterman told Fox News’ America’s Newsroom. “So it’s not going anywhere.”
“If you throw that term around, that actually diminishes what the severity of what impeachment is really reserved for,” he added.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sean Chasten of Illinois have claimed the strikes violated the president’s constitutional requirement to seek congressional approval for the military action.
Trump “has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X.
The War Powers Act of 1973 stipulates that the president must notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and cannot deploy troops for longer than 90 days without a formal declaration of war. Only Congress can declare war, according to Article I of the Constitution, and the last time it did so was during World War II.
Fetterman, one of the few Democrats to support the strikes, said that he didn’t believe they constituted an act of war. Instead, they were simply a “very limited military exercise” that didn’t breach any constitutional guidelines.
Elected in 2022 after trouncing Republican Mehmet Oz, Fetterman has become an outlier among Democrats for his praise for Trump and some Republican initiatives. He told CNN last month that talks among House Democrats about impeachment were “just dumb.”
He broke ranks with many in his party for his unabashed support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Fetterman also became the Senate’s first Democrat to meet with Trump after he won the election, venturing to Mar-a-Lago at Trump’s request. “I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians—not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said at the time.
The turn, which prompted speculation that Fetterman would switch parties, has rankled Democrats—and his own staff. A New York magazine story last month aired concerns from current and former Fetterman staffers that his mental health has worsened and warped his personality. Fetterman told the magazine he had become the “best version” of himself.
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