All right, good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Aisling with Senator
Baldwin's office, a few notes
of housekeeping before we get
started.
The Senator will start us off with
remarks on President Trump's alleged
deal with Iran, and afterward,
we'll have time for a few on-topic
questions.
Please submit any questions you have
to the Zoom chat Q&A function, and
I will relay them to the Senator.
For any questions we do not get to
or off-topics questions, please
follow up with me or our press team
and we will work to get you
responses.
Please note that because we are
doing this webinar style, you will
not be able to record the meeting
within the Zoom app.
However, you are welcome to use a
third party platform to record.
Otherwise, our office will send a
recording via email afterwards to
all participants.
Now, I'll hand it over to Senator
Baldwin to make some remarks.
Senator.
Thank you, Aisling.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I want to thank you all for joining
us on this call today.
So over the weekend, President
Trump told the American people that
his war of choice in
Iran was over.
He told the American people that
Iran had agreed to a
deal.
But I know better than
to take President Trump's
word for it.
And so do most
Wisconsinites.
From his trade wars to
peace negotiations,
President Trump often claims victory
without any work to show
for it.
And this time is no different.
The truth is, President Trump has
not reached a deal with Iran.
There's no agreement to
end their nuclear program.
We have no assurances
that war won't continue and
no evidence that Americans are
any better off today than
they were before this all
started.
In fact, we are told
without any paper to back
it up that President
Trump has merely reached an
agreement to keep talking about
a deal over the next 60
days.
On this deal to make
a deal later, we have zero
details and are
told just to
take the president's word for
it.
The Trump administration and
the Iranian government cannot even
seem to agree on what
is included in the
agreement.
Look, peace is unequivocally
a good thing and something I have
been fighting for since this
president launched.
This unnecessary war.
In fact, it has been something
I've advocated for my
entire career.
But we need to make sure that
whatever is in this agreement is
real and also good
for the American people.
Because so far this president's war
has simply been a disaster for
Wisconsinites.
President Trump's war,
has cost 13 service members
their lives.
Wasted more than 30
billion dollars in taxpayer
funds and raised
the cost at the pump for
American families.
In fact, on that point, Wisconsin,
Wisconsinites have had to spend
877 million
dollars more on gas since
the beginning of the war than they
would have had the war not begun.
That means the average family in
Wisconsin has spent $378
more on gas in
this same period of time.
For Wisconsin farmers,
diesel hit record highs
last month right
in the middle of planting season.
One farmer told me his fuel
costs skyrocketed from
$120,000
to $200,000
over the last year.
Nearly 70% of
farmers reported not being able
to afford the fertilizer
they needed this year.
Across the board, President
Trump is asking working
Wisconsinites to foot the bill for
a war they did not choose and
do not like.
Meanwhile, he's saying he
loves the inflation he's
caused. He literally said that.
Now he's claiming victory without
even sharing what his plan
is for a temporary
solution.
That's why Donald Trump's
wink and nod promise is
simply not enough.
Wisconsin families need details,
and a guarantee that this expensive
and unnecessary war is
over once and for all.
Diplomacy and negotiation
are hard.
We know that, but it
has always been the path forward,
and I would be remiss if I
did not point out how
the president got himself into
this situation.
In his
first term, Trump
tore up the
Iran deal we negotiated
that limited Iran's
nuclear capabilities.
He tore it up, and
now the president is
seeing that this is not
a situation you can just bomb
yourself out of.
So.
Here's what he needs to do.
He needs to show the American people
what is in this agreement,
what our plan is to reach a
real long-term
peace deal, and explain
how any of us are
better off now compared
to three and a half months ago.
Until a long-
term peace agreement is signed
sealed and
any nuclear agreement is delivered
to Congress.
I'm going to continue to do my job
and force the Senate to vote
to stop this war.
This wishy-washy hypothetical
deal with zero details is
just not good enough
for me.
And it's not good for our service
members or Wisconsin farmers
and families who are
shouldering the high costs
because of Trump's
illegal war of choice.
It's time to end this war and
the president really needs to get
serious about doing it
Actually, I'll hang it handed back
to you
Great, thank you, Senator.
Just a reminder that questions
should be submitted to the chat Q&A
function. We will get to as many
on-topic questions as we can with
Senator Baldwin.
If you have any follow-up questions,
please direct them to our office via
email afterwards.
And it looks like we already have a
few coming in, so I'll jump
right into it.
Senator, how suspect are
you that the president refuses
to release the actual text of
the deal? And Trump saying, quote
unquote, it's a very strong deal.
Nobody knows what it is, but it's
very strong.
Yes, I didn't get a chance to
hear or watch his
rambling press conference at
the G7, but
I've had it sort of
described to me.
Look, this president, as
of last week, has
indicated at one time or another
that this war
is over.
Media accounts say that
he has said so 38
separate times The
war is over. We reached agreement
agreements around the corner, etc I
don't know why anyone should view
this as any different
from that The idea
that it's strong,
but nobody's seen it and no one
knows what's in it is ridiculous
It's absolutely ridiculous.
And so I
have no confidence
in this president when he
says that there's an
understanding or,
as I said earlier, an agreement
to start working on another
agreement.
This is not enough and we need
to bring this war to an end.
Thanks, Senator.
Will Senate Democrats pursue the
war powers resolution now that
a MOU between
the US and Iran has been agreed
to?
But even if
there is truly an
mo you a memorandum of
understanding to pause
for 60 days for further
negotiations
This is not
an end to the war and
so yes Congress
absolutely needs to
continue acting to
end this war once and for all
And I want to say just a word or two
about our efforts to do so.
When this president brought
us into his
war of choice, we weren't under
attack. We weren't done under any
imminent threat of attack from
Iran.
He brought us in to an illegal
war.
We responded by saying
that no business as usual.
This cannot be allowed to
stand.
And my colleagues,
my Democratic colleagues and I,
introduced War Powers Resolutions.
And each one of us has brought ours
up in turn, week
after week, to demand
a vote.
And at first we had one Republican
join us,
then two, then three,
then four.
We are gonna carry on
until we are able
to bring this to a close.
And I take.
No solace in the
idea that this president insists
that we're on the verge of
a 60-day
pause or ceasefire to
negotiate a final
end, we've got to
keep holding my Republican
colleagues' feet to the fire and
have them vote to end this war.
Thanks, Senator.
And a bit of a follow-up question to
that one. What was your reaction
when the War Powers vote failed
again yesterday?
Well, sadly, we didn't have
full attendance for various
reasons, and so
that was at least a
part of the of the
issue. But I think it's
quite possible that some
of my Republican colleagues who
had previously joined
us were
taking the president's
word that a
deal to end the war,
an agreement to end the war was
upon us and around the
corner.
I think they'll soon find out
that that's not the case.
And as
the president said,
apparently in his
press conference,
his rambling press conference, that
we can go back to bombing
at any moment.
That type of rhetoric does
not assure me that
this is nearly over.
Thanks, Senator.
And you touched on this at the tail
end of that answer.
But another question for you,
Senator Baldwin, President Trump
today said the potential U.S.-Iran
agreement isn't final and
bombing could resume if they don't
behave. And that's a quote.
Do you have a response to those
comments?
Well, it just underscores
that there is no
deal.
If there was, we would need to see
what's in it.
And from what I can
tell, there's no grand deal to
end the war or stop
Iran's nuclear program.
I said in my opening
remarks that we have to remember
that President Trump tore up
the nuclear deal
that had been reached,
that was reached through diplomacy,
international, multilateral
diplomacy.
And it took months to
get all the details
down and to
get the agreement through.
Congress had a role in signing off
on it.
None of that is
lined up at this period of time.
I can't see possibly how
we could end up with
a stronger deal curtailing
Iran's nuclear program
60 days from now
than we did back in 2015
after months of
multilateral negotiation.
But again, Trump ripped up that
deal and we're going to
possibly probably end
up in a much worse place.
When we finally see
this wind down and
end.
Thanks, Senator.
Next question is, what kind of
agreement between the U.S.
And Iran would be good enough?
Look, first of all,
this should never have been,
this was a war of choice on
President Trump's part,
and this should
have been the subject
of negotiations and
diplomacy from the very beginning.
We need a political and
diplomatic solution to
Iran's nuclear ambitions.
I'm one who agrees.
In fact, I think all my
colleagues agree that Iran
should never have a nuclear
weapon.
And therefore, there
needs to be safeguards
and curtailment, in fact,
probably the end
of Iran's nuclear
program.
And so we
need to get to the table.
And do what was
done in 2014-2015
and come up with a
comprehensive agreement
that includes intrusive
inspections of
Iran's nuclear program
to
assure the world that they
will never have a nuclear
weapon.
But that has
not been the course that this
president has pursued and instead
uh, has started a war that's
cost, uh, 13
members of our armed services,
their lives has caused, uh
dozens of, well, hundreds of
service members to be injured,
some very significantly,
uh and it's cost taxpayers
$30 billion.
Uh, diplomacy in a political
course is the action,
is, is the answer.
Thank you, Senator.
And last question here.
Senator Johnson and congressional
Republicans in Wisconsin have said
that this war was needed to stop
Iran's nuclear program, and
therefore it has been worth it.
What's your response to that?
Let me just underscore this
war was 100%
unnecessary.
It matters to me
that we
follow the Constitution and the laws
of this country.
The president as commander in
chief has the
authority without consulting
Congress to defend our
nation against an attack,
to repel an attack or an
imminent attack against the U.S.
Or its assets and
interests around the world.
None of that was in
question when Trump started
his war of choice in Iran.
And I there was obviously
a deal reached a
little over a decade ago through
hard work and
negotiation, diplomacy.
There's no reason why that couldn't
have happened.
Once again,
despite Donald Trump have having
had ripped up that agreement.
That's, you know, what we're
seeing now as is this
war is
causing more damage, we may
end up
much further behind than we were
before it began.
Certainly, it is costly for
Wisconsinites, for Americans,
and we're getting a
worse deal than before this
war started.
Thank you, Senator.
And that's all we have time for
today to the press box on
the call. I'll be sending around a
recording of this meeting to all
participants in the next 30 minutes
or so.
Please feel free to reach out to me
with any follow-up questions.
Thank you all for joining.