(Bloomberg) — Bernie Sanders said Congress must take immediate steps “to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war,” after U.S. forces killed a top Iranian general in a drone strike the Vermont senator called a “dangerous escalation.”
Speaking in Dubuque, Iowa, Sanders said he, Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and others plan to “advance legislation to assert Congress’s constitutional authority and responsibility to prohibit any funding for offensive military force in or against Iran without Congressional authorization.”
Sanders said he would vote against funding a war in any event, “but if Congress wants to go to war, let Congress have the guts to vote for war. Do not let this president take unilateral action.”
The 2020 presidential candidate also backed a resolution by Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia to force a vote to end unauthorized U.S. hostilities against Iran.
Separately, Sanders brushed aside questions about his age, saying it was an advantage. “I’m 78. I plead guilty,” he said. “Unlike all these kids I’m running against, you can check my record going back a long way. A long way.”
Buttigieg Hits Back After Trump Mocks His Faith (3:02 p.m.)
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Saturday responded to President Donald Trump’s questions about his faith during a stop in New Hampshire.
Trump mocked Buttigieg on Friday during a rally with evangelical Christians at a Miami megachurch, saying the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was “trying to pretend he’s very religious” but had become so “about two weeks ago.”
“I’m not sure why the president’s taken an interest in my faith journey, but certainly I would be happy to discuss it with him,” Buttigieg, 37, said at a town hall meeting in Nashua.
“I just don’t know where that’s coming from, you know. Certainly it has been a complex journey for me, as it is for a lot of people, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been a believer longer than he’s been a Republican.”
Buttigieg, an Episcopalian and former Catholic, has spoken regularly at campaign events about his faith, and sometimes attends services while on the trail. — Tyler Pager
COMING UP:
Democratic candidates are fanning out across early-voting states this weekend, notably Iowa and New Hampshire.
Five Democrats — Joe Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar — have qualified for the next debate, on Jan. 14 in Iowa.
Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign rally in Milwaukee on the same night as the debate, as well as a rally in Toledo on Jan. 9.
The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses will be held Feb. 3.
(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)
–With assistance from Tyler Pager.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Steve Geimann
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