All right, good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Ashling 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-topic 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 the 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, Ashling.
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.
Trump's war has cost 13 service members their lives, wasted more than $30 billion in taxpayer
funds, and raised the cost at the pump for American families.
In fact, on that point, Wisconsinites have had to spend $877 million 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 the 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 percent 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.
I mean, 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.
Now a long term peace agreement is signed and 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.
It's not good enough 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.
Ashley, I'll hand it 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.
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, et cetera.
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.
Senator, will Senate Democrats pursue the War Powers Resolution now that a MOU between
the US and Iran has been agreed to?
Look, even if there is truly an MOU, 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 under any imminent threat of attack from Iran.
He brought us into an illegal war.
We responded by saying that no business as usual, this cannot be allowed to stand.
And my colleague, 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 going to carry on until we are able to bring this to a close.
But I take no solace in the idea that this president insists that we're on the verge
of a 60-day pause or a 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 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. run 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.
You know, 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 an 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 need 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 has started
a war that's cost 13 members of our armed services, their lives, has caused dozens of,
well, hundreds of service members to be injured some very significantly.
And its cost taxpayers $30 billion, diplomacy in a political course is the action, 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 on 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 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 having had
ripped up that agreement.
That's what we're seeing now as this war is causing more damage, and we may end up much
further behind than we were before it began.
But 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.
Thank you.